Did you hear the one about not prescribing angiotensin receptor blockers to patients with ACE inhibitor-induced angioedema? I’ve had heated debates with residents in my old clinic who did not want to even consider ARBs for a patient with worsening diabetic nephropathy who’s had lip swelling while on an ACE-I ten years ago.
Or the one about not giving these patients amlodipine, since there are two — yes, two — case reports on amlodipine-associated angioedema? Should we also stop giving them water?
Then there are shellfish allergies and iodine contrast, fever and atelectasis, morbid obesity and hypothyroidism… No matter how many studies show these associations to be too weak to be clinicaly significant, or just plain false, there will always be an attending somewhere giving them as his or her pearl of the day.
We need some medical mythbusting for physicians, not just the lay public.