Publications by authors named "Cheryl K Zogg"
Predictors of healthy days at home: Benchmarking long-term outcomes in geriatric trauma.
J Trauma Acute Care Surg
December 2024
Article Synopsis
- Quality benchmarking in geriatric trauma care has shifted from short-term outcomes like morbidity and mortality to long-term metrics, with healthy days at home (HDAH) emerging as a useful measure of patient functional status.
- A study of 772,109 Medicare patients showed that factors such as age, race, and level of care significantly impacted the number of HDAH following trauma.
- The findings indicate that higher level trauma centers lead to better outcomes in terms of HDAH, suggesting a need for future research on quality of life metrics post-discharge.
Article Synopsis
- Increased concern about interpersonal violence (IV) in college sports is noted, but its effects on athletes are not well understood.
- The study aimed to measure the prevalence of IV among college athletes, recognize risk factors, and assess the impact on athletes' mental health, emotional ties to their sport, and help-seeking behavior, alongside coaching style perceptions.
- Among over 4,100 surveyed NCAA athletes, nearly 10% disclosed experiencing some form of IV during their sports careers, with a significant portion reporting recent incidents.
Article Synopsis
- Older adults facing emergency general surgery (EGS) are at an increased risk of adverse outcomes due to age-related factors (geriatric vulnerability) and social determinants of health linked to their neighborhoods (neighborhood vulnerability).
- Research showed that higher geriatric vulnerability substantially raises the risk of death, especially in more vulnerable neighborhoods, with rates increasing by up to 15 times compared to less vulnerable areas.
- The study highlighted that these risks are even greater for racial and ethnic minority patients, indicating that both individual health factors and social conditions significantly impact EGS outcomes among older adults.
Article Synopsis
- There is a critical lack of knowledge regarding the long-term outcomes of trauma systems, leading to expanded efforts to assess postdischarge quality metrics, but their application remains unclear.
- This study aims to explore the effectiveness of using these postdischarge quality metrics as a composite score and to compare its effectiveness with in-hospital mortality indicators for evaluating hospital performance.
- The research involved analyzing Medicare claims for over 573,000 older adults hospitalized for trauma-related issues, revealing that several quality metrics, particularly readmission rates and patient recovery time, significantly influenced hospital performance evaluations.
Article Synopsis
- Skin cancers are the most common malignancies, posing a significant public health issue in the U.S. due to their personal and systemic burden.
- Ultraviolet radiation from the sun and tanning beds is a major carcinogen linked to an increased risk of skin cancer.
- The article reviews current U.S. standards for sunscreen, sunglasses, and workplace sun protection, suggesting improvements based on successful interventions from Australia and the UK.
Limited data are available comparing the postdischarge perioperative outcomes of isolated valve-in-valve transcatheter mitral valve replacement (VIV-TMVR) versus surgical reoperative mitral valve replacement (re-SMVR) on a nationwide scale. The objective of this study was to perform a robust head-to-head assessment of contemporary postdischarge outcomes between isolated VIV-TMVR and re-SMVR using a large national multicenter longitudinal database. Adult patients aged ≥18 years with failed/degenerated bioprosthetic mitral valves who underwent either isolated VIV-TMVR or re-SMVR were identified in the 2015 to 2019 Nationwide Readmissions Database.
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- Medicine is increasingly impacted by political factors, but emergency physicians, particularly younger ones, tend to vote less than the general public; with this in mind, research aimed to understand their political views and voting behaviors.
- A survey conducted among emergency medicine trainees revealed high concerns about healthcare costs, uninsured rates, and emergency department crowding, with a significant majority expressing support for single-payer healthcare.
- While most trainees were aware of voting options and generally participated in presidential elections, many faced barriers like work, which led to low engagement in other voting formats and limited contributions to emergency medicine political action committees.
Article Synopsis
- A study analyzed Medicare inpatient claims from 2014-2015 to investigate care discontinuity in geriatric trauma patients, focusing on readmissions to non-index hospitals and their impact on mortality.
- Over 754,000 patients were included, with 2.87% experiencing readmission within 30 days, and among those, 34% went to non-index hospitals; mortality rate after readmission was found to be 25%.
- The key findings indicated that while readmission diagnoses and hospital factors contributed to care discontinuity, it surprisingly did not lead to higher mortality in these patients, suggesting the need for further research on care processes.
Objective: The role of radiation therapy (RT) in melanoma has historically been limited to palliative care, with surgery as the primary treatment modality. However, adjuvant RT can be a powerful tool in certain cases and its application in melanoma has been increasingly explored in recent years. The aim of this study is to explore national patterns of care and associations surrounding the use of adjuvant RT for stage III melanoma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Natural history of atrial and ventricular secondary mitral regurgitation (SMR) is poorly understood. We compared the impact of the degree of SMR on survival between atrial and ventricular dysfunction.
Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients who underwent echocardiography in a healthcare network between 2013-2018.
Importance: A growing body of literature has been developed with the goal of attempting to understand the experiences of female surgeons. While it has helped to address inequities and promote important programmatic improvements, work remains to be done.
Objective: To explore how practicing male and female surgeons' experiences with gender compare across 5 qualitative/quantitative domains: career aspirations, gender-based discrimination, mentor-mentee relationships, perceived barriers, and recommendations for change.
Background: Ongoing efforts to promote quality-improvement in emergency general surgery (EGS) have made substantial strides but lack clear definitions of what constitutes "high-quality" EGS care. To address this concern, we developed a novel set of five non-mortality-based quality metrics broadly applicable to the care of all EGS patients and sought to discern whether (1) they can be used to identify groups of best-performing EGS hospitals, (2) results are similar for simple versus complex EGS severity in both adult (18-64 years) and older adult (≥65 years) populations, and (3) best performance is associated with differences in hospital-level factors.
Methods: Patients hospitalized with 1-of-16 American Association for the Surgery of Trauma-defined EGS conditions were identified in the 2019 Nationwide Readmissions Database.
Article Synopsis
- The study aims to introduce three innovative quality metrics for assessing the health outcomes of older trauma patients after they leave the hospital—these include mortality rates, readmission rates, and the average number of healthy days at home.
- Traumatic injuries significantly affect older adults, so improving the assessment of their health post-discharge is crucial for enhancing care quality.
- Analysis of Medicare claims from over 785,000 trauma admissions reveals that these new metrics provide a more comprehensive view of patient outcomes than relying solely on in-hospital mortality rates, with many hospitals showing differing performance rankings based on the new measures.
Background: Treatment of benign primary cardiac tumors involves surgical resection, but reported outcomes from multi-institutional or national databases are scarce. This study examines contemporary national outcomes following surgical resection of benign primary atrial and ventricular tumors.
Methods: The 2016-2018 Nationwide Readmissions Database was queried for all patients ≥18 years with a primary diagnosis of benign neoplasm of the heart who underwent resection of the atria, ventricles, or atrial/ventricular septum.
Article Synopsis
- The coronavirus pandemic led to the cancellation of many academic events, prompting the development of a virtual, multi-round research competition to maintain global engagement among trainees and surgeons.
- The competition included four rounds: visual abstracts, "Quickshot" presentations, longer oral presentations, and a final defense, with public voting determining progression and winners.
- A total of 73 visual abstracts were presented, primarily from medical students and residents, covering various research topics, with impressive audience engagement reflected by over 30,000 social media views.
Article Synopsis
- * A virtual event called "Day in the Life" was organized for URM high school students, where they participated in activities like suturing and mentoring to enhance their understanding of surgery.
- * Survey results indicated that participants felt more familiar with the surgical field and viewed it as more diverse, with over 70% believing they could become surgeons and 80% wanting further mentorship.
Article Synopsis
- Echocardiography is crucial for diagnosing infective endocarditis (IE), but emerging imaging techniques like FDG-PET are showing potential to reveal conditions that traditional methods may miss.
- A 69-year-old man with heart issues and a suspected infection showed no abscess on echocardiography, but FDG-PET later identified a significant infection requiring immediate surgery.
- This case highlights the need for increased awareness among healthcare providers of advanced imaging techniques to ensure timely diagnoses and interventions for complicated IE cases.
Background: The "July effect", the perception of worse outcomes in the first month of training, has been previously demonstrated in critical care medicine and general surgery. However, the July effect in the context of structural heart interventions (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A growing body of literature suggests the persistence of a counterproductive triage pattern wherein uninsured adults with major injuries presenting to nontrauma centers (NTCs) are more likely than insured adults to be transferred. Geographic differences are frequently blamed. The objective of this study was to explore geography's influence on variations in insurance transfer patterns, asking whether differences in distance and travel time by road from NTCs to the nearest level 1 or 2 trauma center alter the effect.
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- Geographic variation is a key aspect of the US health system, and this study aims to better define Trauma Referral Regions (TRR) to assess inpatient trauma across different age groups.
- Using data from 2016-2017, the research analyzed hospital use metrics (localization index, market share index, net patient flow) across 102 TRRs and compared them to other regional definitions.
- Results showed that TRRs effectively represent distinct trauma regions with consistent hospital use metrics and are linked to important demographic factors, making them a useful tool for evaluating geographic variation in trauma care.
Article Synopsis
- The study evaluates different definitions of health care regions in the U.S., particularly focusing on the Pittsburgh Atlas and Dartmouth Atlas, to analyze COVID-19-related pneumonia admissions.
- Using data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, researchers assessed concordance in care, localization index, and market share across three definitions of health regions (Pittsburgh Atlas, Dartmouth Atlas, and counties).
- Results demonstrated that both the Pittsburgh and Dartmouth Atlases performed similarly and significantly better than county definitions in terms of regional care metrics, highlighting the importance of regional definitions for improving healthcare delivery during the pandemic.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates the impact of health care reforms in the US Military Health System, which will transition over 1.9 million beneficiaries from military treatment facilities to civilian hospitals in the coming years.
- It compares the quality of care received by MHS beneficiaries in military facilities (Direct Care) versus civilian hospitals (Purchased Care) using specific quality metrics, examining differences in mortality, morbidity, and patient safety.
- Findings indicate that, on average, MHS beneficiaries treated in military facilities receive better inpatient care and patient safety than those treated in local civilian hospitals, suggesting potential quality declines as the reforms are implemented.