UnTWISTing the BALS: A study of predictive accuracy of clinical scoring tools for testicular torsion identification in adults.

Objective: Testicular torsion is an uncommon but time-critical condition in EDs. If the diagnosis is missed or delayed, there are significant medicolegal and patient fertility implications. Scoring tools are advocated for use in children but have limited validation in adults.

Emergency department patients' attitudes towards the use of data in their clinical record for research without their consent.

Background: Health research often uses health information, a subcategory of personal information, collected during clinical encounters. Conditions under which such health information can be used for the secondary purpose of research are set out in state, national and international law. In Australia, consent is required or the relevant conditions for a waiver of consent must be met and approved by a human research ethics committee (HREC).

Is waiver of consent for the use of health information for research acceptable to emergency department patients?

Some emergency medicine research, especially retrospective studies using medical records review, rely on waiver of consent for use of personal health information (PHI) contained in clinical records. This is a secondary use of PHI and waiver of consent raises ethical, legal and practical issues. Granting of a waiver of consent is often (but not always) approved by a human research ethics committee and requires separate but inter-related consideration of the legal and ethical issues.

Can soluble urokinase plasminogen receptor predict outcomes after cardiac surgery?

Objectives: Soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) is a biomarker that has been implicated in several cardiac pathologies and has been shown to be elevated in critically ill populations. We measured plasma suPAR in a cohort of cardiac surgical patients to evaluate its ability to predict prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital length of stay and development of complications following surgery. We compared suPAR against EuroSCORE II and C-reactive protein (CRP).