Publications by authors named "Anesi G"

Introduction: The rapid adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems has resulted in extensive archives of data relevant to clinical research, hospital operations, and the development of learning health systems. However, EHR data are not frequently available, cleaned, standardized, validated, and ready for use by stakeholders. We describe an in-progress effort to overcome these challenges with cooperative, systematic data extraction and validation.

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Rationale: Patients with sepsis and/or acute respiratory failure are at high risk for death or long hospital stays, yet limited evidence exists to guide triage to intensive care units (ICUs) or general medical wards for the majority of these patients who do not initially require life support.

Objectives: To identify factors that influence how hospitals triage patients with capacity-sensitive conditions and those factors that may account for observed ICU relative to ward, or ward relative to ICU, benefits for such patients.

Methods: We conducted an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study.

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Background: A proposed new global definition of ARDS seeks to update the Berlin definition and account for nonintubated ARDS and ARDS diagnoses in resource-variable settings.

Research Question: How do ARDS epidemiologic characteristics change with operationalizing the new global definition of ARDS in a resource-limited setting?

Study Design And Methods: We performed a real-use retrospective cohort study among adult patients meeting criteria for the Berlin definition of ARDS or the global definition of ARDS at ICU admission in two public hospitals in the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health, South Africa, from January 2017 through June 2022.

Results: Among 5,760 adults (aged ≥ 18 years) admitted to the ICU, 2,027 patients (35.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study tracks changes in patient characteristics and medical care for those hospitalized with severe acute respiratory infections during different COVID-19 pandemic phases in the U.S.
  • It involves a longitudinal cohort study of 874 patients across multiple hospitals, focusing on demographics, health conditions, and treatment outcomes corresponding to different SARS-CoV-2 variants.
  • The findings highlight the evolution of patient outcomes and emphasize the need for a continuous clinical network to better understand both known and new respiratory viral diseases.
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This article provides a report of a case of organ dysfunction, myonecrosis, rhabdomyolysis, multifocal ischemic cerebral infarcts, and cerebral edema after a patient's use of xylazine and fentanyl. Within the US opioid epidemic, xylazine is emerging as a troubling national sub-story. The prevalence of xylazine within illicitly manufactured opioids and the proportion of opioid-involved overdose deaths with detected xylazine are rising dramatically, the latter increasing 276% between 2019 and 2022.

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The Penn Medicine COVID-19 Therapeutics Committee-an interspecialty, clinician-pharmacist, and specialist-front line primary care collaboration-has served as a forum for rapid evidence review and the production of dynamic practice recommendations during the 3-year coronavirus disease 2019 public health emergency. We describe the process by which the committee went about its work and how it navigated specific challenging scenarios. Our target audiences are clinicians, hospital leaders, public health officials, and researchers invested in preparedness for inevitable future threats.

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Objectives: To quantify the frequency, outside of the pandemic setting, with which individual healthcare facilities faced surge periods due to severe increases in demand for emergency department (ED) care.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Setting: U.

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Supply-demand mismatch of ward resources ("ward capacity strain") alters care and outcomes. Narrow strain definitions and heterogeneous populations limit strain literature. Evaluate the predictive utility of a large set of candidate strain variables for in-hospital mortality and discharge destination among acute respiratory failure (ARF) survivors.

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Background: Mortality prediction for intensive care unit (ICU) patients frequently relies on single ICU admission acuity measures without accounting for subsequent clinical changes.

Objective: Evaluate novel models incorporating modified admission and daily, time-updating Laboratory-based Acute Physiology Score, version 2 (LAPS2) to predict in-hospital mortality among ICU patients.

Research Design: Retrospective cohort study.

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Background: Hospital adaptation and resiliency, required during public health emergencies to optimize outcomes, are understudied especially in resource-limited settings.

Research Question: What are the prepandemic and pandemic critical illness outcomes in a resource-limited setting and in the context of capacity strain?

Study Design And Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study among patients admitted to ICUs at two public hospitals in the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health in South Africa preceding and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2017-2022). We used multivariate logistic regression to analyze the association between three patient cohorts (prepandemic non-COVID-19, pandemic non-COVID-19, and pandemic COVID-19) and ICU capacity strain and the primary outcome of ICU mortality.

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Although the mainstay of sepsis treatment is timely initiation of broad-spectrum antimicrobials, treatment delays are common, especially among patients who develop hospital-onset sepsis. The time of day has been associated with suboptimal clinical care in several contexts, but its association with treatment initiation among patients with hospital-onset sepsis is unknown. Assess the association of time of day with antimicrobial initiation among ward patients with hospital-onset sepsis.

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Importance: Although racial and ethnic minority patients with sepsis and acute respiratory failure (ARF) experience worse outcomes, how patient presentation characteristics, processes of care, and hospital resource delivery are associated with outcomes is not well understood.

Objective: To measure disparities in hospital length of stay (LOS) among patients at high risk of adverse outcomes who present with sepsis and/or ARF and do not immediately require life support and to quantify associations with patient- and hospital-level factors.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This matched retrospective cohort study used electronic health record data from 27 acute care teaching and community hospitals across the Philadelphia metropolitan and northern California areas between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2018.

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Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic threatened standard hospital operations. We sought to understand how this stress was perceived and manifested within individual hospitals and in relation to local viral activity.

Design: Prospective weekly hospital stress survey, November 2020-June 2022.

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Unlabelled: To understand how strain-process-outcome relationships in patients with sepsis may vary among hospitals.

Design: Retrospective cohort study using a validated hospital capacity strain index as a within-hospital instrumental variable governing ICU versus ward admission, stratified by hospital.

Setting: Twenty-seven U.

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Background: Mortality prediction for intensive care unit (ICU) patients frequently relies on single acuity measures based on ICU admission physiology without accounting for subsequent clinical changes.

Objectives: Evaluate novel models incorporating modified admission and daily, time-updating Laboratory-based Acute Physiology Scores, version 2 (LAPS2) to predict in-hospital mortality among ICU patients.

Research Design: Retrospective cohort study.

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Unlabelled: Vascular dysfunction and capillary leak are common in critically ill COVID-19 patients, but identification of endothelial pathways involved in COVID-19 pathogenesis has been limited. Angiopoietin-like 4 (ANGPTL4) is a protein secreted in response to hypoxic and nutrient-poor conditions that has a variety of biological effects including vascular injury and capillary leak.

Objectives: To assess the role of ANGPTL4 in COVID-19-related outcomes.

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Unlabelled: Respiratory virus infections cause significant morbidity and mortality ranging from mild uncomplicated acute respiratory illness to severe complications, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome, multiple organ failure, and death during epidemics and pandemics. We present a protocol to systematically study patients with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI), including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, due to respiratory viral pathogens to evaluate the natural history, prognostic biomarkers, and characteristics, including hospital stress, associated with clinical outcomes and severity.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

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We have previously shown that hospital strain is associated with intensive care unit (ICU) admission and that ICU admission, compared with ward admission, may benefit certain patients with acute respiratory failure (ARF). To understand how strain-process-outcomes relationships in patients with ARF may vary among hospitals and what hospital practice differences may account for such variation. We examined high-acuity patients with ARF who did not require mechanical ventilation or vasopressors in the emergency department (ED) and were admitted to 27 U.

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Patients who identify as from racial or ethnic minority groups who have sepsis or acute respiratory failure (ARF) experience worse outcomes relative to nonminority patients, but processes of care accounting for disparities are not well-characterized. Determine whether reductions in intensive care unit (ICU) admission during hospital-wide capacity strain occur preferentially among patients who identify with racial or ethnic minority groups. This retrospective cohort among 27 hospitals across the Philadelphia metropolitan area and Northern California between 2013 and 2018 included adult patients with sepsis and/or ARF who did not require life support at the time of hospital admission.

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