COVID-19 in aged care homes: a comparison of effects initial government policies had in the UK (primarily focussing on England) and Australia during the first wave.

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact globally, with older people living in aged care homes suffering high death rates.

Objectives: We aimed to compare the impact of initial government policies on this vulnerable older population between the UK and Australia during the first wave of attack.

Methods: We searched websites of governments in the UK and Australia and media outlets.

The Association of Geriatric Syndromes with Hospital Outcomes.

Background: Frailty, history of dementia (HoD), and acute confusional states (ACS) are common in older patients admitted to hospital.

Objective: To study the association of frailty (≥6 points in the Clinical Frailty Scale [CFS]), HoD, and ACS with hospital outcomes, controlling for age, gender, acute illness severity (measured by a Modified Early Warning Score in the emergency department), comorbidity (Charlson Comorbidity Index), and discharging specialty (general medicine, geriatric medicine, surgery).

Design: Retrospective observational study.

Leukemia-associated somatic mutations drive distinct patterns of age-related clonal hemopoiesis.

Clonal hemopoiesis driven by leukemia-associated gene mutations can occur without evidence of a blood disorder. To investigate this phenomenon, we interrogated 15 mutation hot spots in blood DNA from 4,219 individuals using ultra-deep sequencing. Using only the hot spots studied, we identified clonal hemopoiesis in 0.

The second national audit of intermediate care.

Intermediate care services have developed internationally to expedite discharge from hospital and to provide an alternative to an emergency hospital admission. Inconsistencies in the evidence base and under-developed governance structures led to concerns about the care quality, outcomes and provision of intermediate care in the NHS. The National Audit of Intermediate Care was therefore established by an interdisciplinary group.

A Chinese doctor's experience of acute medicine in England.

This article describes the differences in training and departmental function between the specialties of emergency medicine in China and acute medicine in the U.K., based on the experience of a visiting international medical graduate from Shanghai.

Tolterodine-induced hyponatraemia.

Management of electrolyte abnormalities is challenging in older people as the sensation of thirst, renal function and hormonal modulators of the milieu interior are often impaired. Furthermore, the complex effects of ageing upon these homeostatic mechanisms are often superimposed upon a background of chronic disease, malnutrition and co-existent medications. Hyponatraemia is one of the commonest electrolyte abnormalities, occurring in approximately 7% of healthy elderly persons.