Assessing the financial impact of an inpatient acute palliative care unit in a tertiary care teaching hospital.

Background: Evidence suggests palliative care consult services yield cost improvements; few studies have examined the impact of an inpatient palliative care unit on hospital costs.

Objective: This study estimates the cost avoidance of a single hospital's acute palliative care unit (APCU), building upon previous studies (1) by limiting pre-APCU costs to two days pre-APCU transfer, thereby minimizing bias from higher-cost first days of admission, and (2) by not limiting the study to cancer patients or patients who died, thereby presenting more comprehensive APCU costs.

Design: This retrospective study compares direct costs of care on an APCU with costs pre-APCU transfer from general medical units, intensive care units (ICU), and the emergency department (ED), and compares the direct costs of APCU patients with those of control patients.

Incidence of encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis: a single-center experience with long-term peritoneal dialysis in the United States.

Encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis (EPS) is a serious complication of long-term peritoneal dialysis (PD). The reported incidence varies between 0.5% and 4.

The cardiomyopathy of iron deficiency.

Iron-deficiency anemia can have deleterious effects on the heart. Herein, we describe the effects of iron deficiency on the heart as corroborated with electrocardiography, radiology, echocardiography, and cardiac catheterization. We review the pathophysiology, clinical features, and management of iron-deficiency-induced cardiomyopathy.

Infliximab-induced headache and infliximab-induced meningitis: two ends of the same spectrum?

This report describes a case of aseptic meningitis induced by the tumor necrosis factor-alpha inhibitor infliximab. The patient, a 51-year-old female, was being treated for Crohn's disease. After an infliximab infusion, she had headache, fever, arthralgia, myalgia, and meningismus.