Through the drug interactions program, you can review
all interactions for a selected medication or enter a patient-specific
regimen to analyze for potential interactions and the severity of the
interaction. Additionally, you may select a drug interaction result to
obtain detailed information on patient management.
To search for information about drug interactions:
From the New Search page or from the drug interactions section
of any drug information topic, click the Drug Interactions link. Click the Click here to continue link to close
the drug information disclaimer.
Enter a drug name and click Lookup.
Enter additional drug names if you are interested in their
interactions.
Click on a single drug name to display the complete list of
interactions for that item.
Click Analyze to see potential interactions
between items in the list.
An alphabetical listing of all topics in each specialty in UpToDate
is available in both the online and desktop computer versions. To view the Table
of Contents, click the About UpToDate link at the top
of the page and then click Contents in the left
navigation menu. This will bring you to a list of the different medical
specialties included in UpToDate. Clicking on a specialty will
bring you to a listing of the sections for that specialty.
For example, select "Endocrinology" and then
click on "Diabetes mellitus" to view all titles included
in the Diabetes mellitus section.
Our physician editors have made it easy for you to stay current
through the What's New feature. This feature provides you with a
summary of the most important updates that have been added to
the service for each specialty since the last release. To view these
summaries, click What's New on the toolbar.
UpToDate provides hundreds of patient education topics that
clinicians can share with patients or patients can access on their own
through our web site at www.uptodate.com/patients.
These topics offer an in-depth discussion of the risk factors,
causes, diagnostic processes, preventive measures, complications, and
recommended treatments for many of the most common conditions. Similar
to our clinician-level materials, the patient information topics are
updated every four months; thus, our patient information is some of the
most accurate and evidence-based available.
Our patient information is written for educated and inquisitive
patients and family members, and may not be appropriate for all reading
levels. See the "Where to get more information" section of each
patient-level topic for other web sites that may be appropriate for
patients at different reading levels.
Accessing UpToDate patient
information
Clinicians can access patient information topics as follows:
Click Patient Info on the toolbar, then click
on the medical category of interest.
Through the search facility (for example, search on "patient
info asthma"). In UpToDate online, you can use the Prioritize
patient topics option to display patient topics first in the search
results.
Click Patient in the topic tools area at
upper-right in a topic to go directly to the Information for Patients
section, where you will find links to any related patient information
topics.
Note: The Patient tool is
available only in professional-level topics for which there is related
patient information.
Our patient information topics are also available free to the
public at www.uptodate.com/patients.
Patients can search for information using the search facility. Relevant
patient information topics (where available) will be listed at the top
of the search results list. Patients can also click on "view
patient-level table of contents" directly below the Search box to view
all of our patient information topics by medical category. All topics
can be printed or e-mailed.
You can display a list of recently-run searches and
recently-viewed topics from which you can click on a search entry to
rerun the search or click on a topic title to redisplay the topic, as
follows:
In UpToDate online, click the arrow control located at the
right side of the New Search box, then select the desired search entry
or topic title from the drop-down list.
From a desktop computer installation, select the desired search entry
or topic title from the Recent Topics menu.
UpToDate includes electrocardiograms that can be accessed from some
topics that discuss specific diseases or arrhythmia. You can test your
knowledge by running a self-test, as follows:
Click New Search on the toolbar to display the New Search
page.
Type ECG test in the New Search box.
Click Go to display a list of matching search results.
Choose one of the ECG test topics (for example, "Intermediate
ECG test") by clicking on the title.
After reading the first case history, click the show ECG
question 1 link to open a window that displays the Intermediate case 1
ECG strip, along with a normal ECG strip.
Try to make an accurate diagnosis based on the Intermediate
ECG case 1 strip, then close the window that displays the ECG strips.
To see if your diagnosis is correct, click the show ECG answer
1 link.
Close the answer window, then continue with the next test
question.
UpToDate includes interactive topics that allow you to
enter the values in commonly used formulas to obtain numerical data,
such as urinary protein excretion estimation or results for LDL based on
the Friedewald equation for low density lipoprotein. There are also
topics that allow you to estimate the severity of community acquired
pneumonia in a given patient based upon the presence or absence of major
risk factors.
To access calculator topics, click Calculators
on the toolbar to display the Contents: Calculators page. From there,
you can click All Calculators to view the calculator
topics for every specialty, or you can click on a particular specialty
to view the calculator topics related to that specialty.
You can also access calculator topics by clicking on Calculators
in the Table of Contents, by searching on the term "calculators", or by
searching on a particular subject.
The following procedure provides an example of how to access and
use a calculator topic:
Click Calculators on the toolbar to display
the Contents: Calculators page.
Click All Calculators.
Scroll to the Cardiology calculators section and click on
the title of the topic "Calculator: Friedewald equation for low density
lipoprotein (LDL)".
Specify the total cholesterol, HDL, and triglyceride levels.
Use the drop-down lists to select the appropriate units in each case.
The calculator displays the LDL level, based on the values you
have specified. If desired, you can change the units in which the
result is displayed by selecting a different value from the drop-down
list.
If you want to display the results to a different level of
decimal precision, select the desired number of decimal places in the
Decimal Precision box.
