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I'm Brian Olshansky.
I am Professor Emeritus of
Medicine at the University of Iowa
in Iowa City, United States.
I'm also a practicing
electrophysiologist
and cardiologist at Mercy
Hospital in Mason City, Iowa
and at Covenant Hospital
in Waterloo, Iowa.
Today, I'm going to talk about a
topic of general interest, a topic
that is pertinent to internists,
cardiologists, neurologists,
and emergency room physicians,
as well as general physicians who
care for patients that have episodes
of transient loss of consciousness.
This is a general overview
of the topic of syncope.
And in subsequent talks, I
will focus on specific aspects
of the management.
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Syncope is a very common problem,
and it's very challenging.
The science of managing
patients with syncope
is difficult, due to the
complexity of the presentations
and the diversity of the types
of patients that have the problem
of transient loss of consciousness.
Therefore, despite guidelines and
various approaches to managing
patients with this
problem, there has never
been a cogent, organized scheme
that applies to all patients
and can reduce the
complexity of the management.
Years ago, I presented a topic
similar to this to my fellows.
And before I started,
one of my fellows
said to me, unless you can tell me
what to do about the next patient
that comes into the emergency
department with syncope,
how to manage that patient,
the talk won't have any value.
So I thought what I would do is to
start with a clinical presentation.
