Essential Facts and Strategies for Passing
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Board Basics®
An Enhancement to MKSAP® 18
This document is licensed for individual use only. Copyright © 2018 American College of Physicians. All rights reserved.
An Enhancement to MKSAP® 18
Board Basics®
This document is licensed for individual use only. Copyright © 2018 American College of Physicians. All rights reserved.
ii
Your Last Stop before the Boards
medicine. Remember that Board Basics is not a patient care
resource.
Content Organization
Abbreviations, spelled out in a convenient list at the back of
the book, are used frequently to increase reading efficiency.
Content is organized by topic and in consistent categories,
such as Prevention, Screening, Diagnosis, Treatment, and
Follow-up. Special components have been designed to
enhance learning and recall.
Look for:
• Don’t Be Tricked: Incorrect answers that may masquerade
as correct choices.
• Test Yourself: Abbreviated case histories and answers
found in Board exam questions.
• Study Tables: Key concepts to prepare you for specific
types of questions.
• Yellow highlighting: We applied our own “marker” to call
your attention to important phrases.
Benefits of This Text
For this edition of Board Basics, MKSAP 18 authors reviewed
the latest literature and produced 11 concise text sections and
1200 Board-like multiple-choice questions. Next, the content
was turned over to 13 carefully selected program directors,
instructors, and professors of medicine with expertise in
Board preparation and the subspecialties of internal medicine.
These physicians culled the essential points from MKSAP
18 and added their insights to update the content of Board
Basics. As Editor-in-Chief, I reviewed and distilled the
MKSAP 18 text by eliminating overlap and excessive material
to focus the text as sharply as possible. The end product is
what you have in your hands—the best Board prep tool that
you will find anywhere. We hope you enjoy it and benefit
from your study. Best wishes on your exam.
Virginia U. Collier, MD, MACP, FRCP
Editor-in-Chief
Board Basics
For the fifth consecutive edition of MKSAP, we bring you
Board Basics, the only publication that compiles the essen-
tial facts and strategies for passing the Internal Medicine
Certification and Maintenance of Certification (MOC) exams
into one print book and e-book. We are confident that this
volume will continue to meet your needs.
How to Use Board Basics
The goal of Board Basics is to prepare you for the Boards
after you have completed a systematic review of MKSAP
18 and its more than 1200 multiple-choice questions. We
have combed through the MKSAP 18 content to produce a
concise compilation of only the information that you will
most likely see in the exam. The sections of Board Basics
are organized to mirror those of MKSAP, making it easy for
you to locate information within the
11 MKSAP subspecialty sections to further your learning
on specific topics as you need. Board Basics is not a con-
cise guide to patient care but, rather, an exam preparation
tool to help you quickly recognize the most likely answers
on a multiple-choice exam. Drug dosages are not included
since they are rarely, if ever, tested. You will also see many
sections in which information has been omitted because
it is difficult to test or is otherwise unlikely to appear on
the exam.
Broad differential diagnoses are not provided for most
problems. Instead, Board Basics focuses on the entities that
have the highest probability of appearing on the exam as
the “correct answers.” Critical points that appear on the
exam are often presented here in isolation, stripped of
context that is not relevant to answering a multiple-choice
question. If you review these points shortly before your
exam, you will have the best chance of remembering what
you need to know to do well. Knowing that most Board
questions are prefaced with the words “most likely,” we
have tried to be very directive, skipping important steps
in the patient evaluation. When you see the words “select”
or “choose,” think in terms of selecting or choosing a
particular answer, not an intervention in the practice of
This document is licensed for individual use only. Copyright © 2018 American College of Physicians. All rights reserved.
iii
Board Basics
Nasrollah Ghahramani, MD, MS, FACP1
Professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences
Vice Chair for Educational Affairs
Interim Chief, Division of Nephrology
Penn State College of Medicine
Hershey, Pennsylvania
Robert G. Kaniecki, MD1
Director, UPMC Headache Center
Chief, Headache Division
Assistant Director, Neurology Residency Training Program
Director, Headache Fellowship Program
Assistant Professor of Neurology
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Gregory A. Masters, MD, FACP1
Principal Investigator, National Cancer Institute Community
Oncology Research Program
Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and Research Institute
Associate Professor of Medicine
Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson
University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Brian S. Porter, MD2
Cardiologist
Core Physicians
Exeter, New Hampshire
Benjamin T. Suratt, MD1
Professor of Medicine and Cell and Molecular Biology
Vice Chair of Medicine for Academic Affairs
Associate Chief, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
University of Vermont College of Medicine
Burlington, Vermont
Jennifer M. Weiss, MD, MS1
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Department of Medicine
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and
Public Health
Madison, Wisconsin
Jennifer Wright, MD, FACP1
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of General Internal Medicine
University of Washington School of Medicine
Seattle, Washington
Editor-in-Chief
Virginia U. Collier, MD, MACP, FRCP2
Chair Emeritus, Department of Medicine
Christiana Care Health System
Newark, Delaware
Honorary Professor of Medicine
Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Contributors
Victoria E. Burke, MD1
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
Infectious Diseases Fellowship Associate Program
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center
New Orleans, Louisiana
Aaron J. Calderon, MD, FACP2
Chair, Department of Medicine
Program Director, Internal Medicine Residency
Saint Joseph Hospital
Professor of Clinical Medicine
University of Colorado SOM
Denver, Colorado
Ana M. Cilursu, MD, FACP1
Staff Rheumatologist
Shore Physicians Group
Shore Medical Center
Somers Point, New Jersey
Mark Corriere, MD, FACP2
Clinical Endocrinologist
Maryland Endocrine
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Baltimore, Maryland
Anthony A. Donato, MD, MHPE, FACP1
Associate Program Director, Internal Medicine
Professor of Medicine
Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University
Tower Health Medical Group
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Richard S. Eisenstaedt, MD, MACP1
Clinical Professor of Medicine
Thomas Jefferson University
Chair, Department of Medicine
Abington Memorial Hospital
Abington, Pennsylvania
This document is licensed for individual use only. Copyright © 2018 American College of Physicians. All rights reserved.
iv
Consultants
Marta Kokoszynska, MD1
Instructor, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine
Burlington, Vermont
Dhaval Shah, MD, MBBS1
Hematology/Oncology Physician
Helen F. Graham Cancer Center
Newark, Delaware
Board Basics ACP Editorial Staff
Linnea Donnarumma1, Staff Editor
Margaret Wells1, Director, Self-Assessment and Educational
Programs1
Becky Krumm1, Managing Editor, Self-Assessment and
Educational Programs1
ACP Principal Staff
Davoren Chick, MD, FACP2
Senior Vice President, Medical Education
Patrick C. Alguire, MD, FACP2
Senior Vice President Emeritus, Medical Education
MKSAP 18 Editor-in-Chief
Sean McKinney1
Vice President, Medical Education
Margaret Wells1
Director, Self-Assessment and Educational Programs
Becky Krumm1
Managing Editor
Valerie Dangovetsky1
Administrator
Ellen McDonald, PhD1
Senior Staff Editor
Megan Zborowski1
Senior Staff Editor
Jackie Twomey1
Senior Staff Editor
Randy Hendrickson1
Production Administrator/Editor
Julia Nawrocki1
Digital Content Associate/Editor
Linnea Donnarumma1
Staff Editor
Chuck Emig1
Staff Editor
Joysa Winter1
Staff Editor
Kimberly Kerns1
Administrative Coordinator
1.
Has no relationships with any entity producing, marketing, reselling, or distributing
health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients.
2.
Has disclosed relationship(s) with any entity producing, marketing, reselling, or
distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients.
Disclosure of Relationships with any entity producing,
marketing, reselling, or distributing health care goods or
services consumed by, or used on, patients.
Patrick C. Alguire, MD, FACP
Royalties
UpToDate
Aaron J. Calderon, MD, FACP
Speakers Bureau
MedStudy
Stock Options/Holdings
Pfizer Inc., Merck, Abbott
Davoren Chick, MD, FACP
Royalties
Wolters Kluwer Publishing
Consultantship
EBSCO Health’s DynaMed Plus
Other: Owner and sole proprietor of Coding 101 LLC;
research consultant (spouse) for Vedanta Biosciences Inc.
Virginia U. Collier, MD, MACP, FRCP
Stock Options/Holdings
Celgene, Pfizer Inc., Merck, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson,
Medtronic plc, Amgen, Roche, Sanofi, Novartis, AbbVie
Inc., Stryker, WellPoint Health Networks
Mark Corriere, MC, USN, FACP
Speakers Bureau
Eli Lilly and Co., Sanofi, AstraZeneca
Brian Porter, MD
Other: Medtronic plc: educational support received to
attend two-day course on pacemaker interrogations,
programming, and implantation
This document is licensed for individual use only. Copyright © 2018 American College of Physicians. All rights reserved.