In the Label ‘Adult Failure to Thrive,’ Medicine Reveals Its Own Failures

July 12, 2022

(STAT News) – The trouble was, often the patient wasn’t fine. She remembers people with “adult failure to thrive” who turned out to have all sorts of acute issues, from pus-filled wounds in the lung to joints burgeoning with bacteria. “I’ve definitely seen multiple cases where I’ve gone down and the person has actually had a heart attack, or they have an active infection, or they have a broken bone — and not been fully investigated because of this label,” Spencer said. Often, these people had conditions that looked different in older adults, that didn’t match the classic presentation. Sometimes, they’d been waiting 10 or 12 hours since seeing the doctor who’d described them as having “FTT.” (Read More)