Outpatient Management of Emergency Department Patients With Acute Pulmonary Embolism: Variation, Patient Characteristics, and Outcomes.

Study Objective: Outpatient management of emergency department (ED) patients with acute pulmonary embolism is uncommon. We seek to evaluate the facility-level variation of outpatient pulmonary embolism management and to describe patient characteristics and outcomes associated with home discharge.

Methods: The Management of Acute Pulmonary Embolism (MAPLE) study is a retrospective cohort study of patients with acute pulmonary embolism undertaken in 21 community EDs from January 2013 to April 2015.

Lifestyle Medicine: A Brief Review of Its Dramatic Impact on Health and Survival.

By ignoring the root causes of disease and neglecting to prioritize lifestyle measures for prevention, the medical community is placing people at harm. Advanced nations, influenced by a Western lifestyle, are in the midst of a health crisis, resulting largely from poor lifestyle choices. Epidemiologic, ecologic, and interventional studies have repeatedly indicated that most chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes, are the result of lifestyles fueled by poor nutrition and physical inactivity.

Evidence-Based Workflows for Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery.

A need exists to reduce care variations by standardizing the practice of thyroid and parathyroid surgery. During the course of a year, a task force developed algorithms representing decision points and workflows based on American Thyroid Association guidelines and three internal studies of surgical practices in the Northern and Southern California Regions of Kaiser Permanente conducted in collaboration with Health Information Technology Transformation & Analytics (HITTA).

99m Tc anti-CD 15 monoclonal antibody (LeuTech) imaging improves diagnostic accuracy and clinical management in patients with equivocal presentation of appendicitis.

Background: Appendicitis frequently presents in an atypical fashion leading to misdiagnosis or a delay in diagnosis. This is particularly true in early cases where the patient may be erroneously discharged from an emergency department and will invariably return with perforated appendicitis. The standard of care is hospital admission for observation or early operation.