Ateneo - UPO

The course will focus on the methods of setting up a complex therapy and its prescription.
Treatment of specific conditions, both acute and chronic, with an evidence-based approach: patient characteristics, drug choice, efficacy assessment, follow-up modalities, adverse events diagnosis and management.

Harrison’s principles of internal medicine (free for UPO students on Access Medicine)
Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 12ed (free for UPO students on Access Medicine)
Drug Monographs (free for UPO students on Access Medicine)

To teach the correct method of setting up and prescribing therapy both in hospital and home settings. To transmit knowledge about the therapeutical approach to many diseases of interest for internal medicine, both for long-term therapy and for the management of acute complications (for example, setting the therapy of the patient with diabetes mellitus and for the management of diabetic ketoacidosis). The course will treat also more specialistic therapies, for example immunosuppressive therapies and anti-TNF alpha drugs, to enable the future doctor to recognize promptly any complications related to the therapy itself.

Knowledge of the pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, diagnostic approach of the most important diseases of interest for Internal Medicine.
Knowledge of the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, mechanism of action and adverse events of drugs used in the treatment of both chronic and acute conditions.

The course makes use of the “Didattica in rete” (DIR) platform both for the sharing of educational material (PPT presentations) and for in-depth analysis (forum and sharing of scientific articles of interest, concerning the program.

Not applicable

Multiple choice questionnaire and a simulated case scenario that the student will solve using an informatic platform. Both the mentioned steps are included in the Clinica Medica examination. A part of the 90 overall questions concerns the Medical Therapy program, the clinical case also presents questions relating to therapeutic management, the identification of adverse events from drugs or other aspects relating to the Medical Therapy course.

1- Correct prescription of therapy both in hospital and homecare settings.
2- Acute and chronic pain therapy. Procedural sedo-analgesia.
3- Therapeutic approach to type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Importance of proper diet education, classic and new generation oral hypoglycemic drugs, insulin and insulin analogues.
4- Treatment of the diabetic patient with acute complications and setting of insulin therapy in the critically ill diabetic patient (eg myocardial infarction, sepsis).
5- Anticoagulant therapy: setting and follow-up of the patient.
6- Therapeutic setting of the patient with acute arthritis. Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
7- Method of setting antibiotic therapy, EUCAST criteria for the evaluation of antibiotic resistance. Therapeutic approach to some frequent infectious diseases (e.g. urinary tract and airways infections).
8- Treatment of heart failure
9- Therapeutic approach to essential arterial hypertension
10- Systematic approach to the mnost important electrolytes derangements.
11- Treatment of dyspepsia.
12- Use of diuretics.

The student should demonstrate competence regarding the topics scheduled in the course. Speculative and pragmatic skills will be also tested during the examination in order to assess the application of knowledge in a practical context.