Life-Threatening Complications of Eating Disorders
A special issue of Medicina (ISSN 1648-9144).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 2881
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Eating disorders are common serious conditions that may present to any clinician. The general practitioner may be faced with a patient with vague symptoms, and if weight and height are not measured, and eating disorders thought about, the diagnosis may be missed and the patient may rapidly deteriorate and present to the Emergency Department. There, bloods and an ECG may be taken, but if a nutritional assessment is not done and the patient is discharged, they may be brought back near death. If the patient is admitted, a physician or pediatrician will be faced with a patient who may be very severely malnourished, but resist attempts to improve nutritional state. The clinical problem may be seen as primarily physical, with the intention to involve mental health services when the patient is medically better. However, that is a mistake, because close joint medical/pediatric and psychiatric collaboration to manage the physical and psychological aspects of care in parallel is most likely to be successful. The patient may require expert nursing, both physical and mental, and careful refeeding with the help of a knowledgeable dietitian. Malnutrition and bulimic symptoms can lead to severe electrolyte imbalance and renal impairment. Additionally, if the patient has type 1 diabetes mellitus, the eating disorder can make the T1DM very hard to manage, and this alongside diabetic complications can result in a seriously life-threatening clinical presentation.
In this Issue, we wish to cover the management of patients with eating disorders who present in a life-threatening clinical state. In addition to the scenarios described above, the patient may also suffer from depression and suicidal ideation. These complex presentations require detailed collaboration between psychiatric and medical professionals at all stages, and we hope that the Issue will serve as a guide to management.
Dr. Paul H. Robinson
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Medicina is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- Eating disorders
- Anorexia nervosa
- Bulimia nervosa
- Malnutrition
- Hypokalaemia
- Refeeding syndrome
- Suicide
- T1DE