Pathogen-Negative Sepsis-An Opportunity for Antimicrobial Stewardship.

Sepsis is a common reason for empiric antibiotics among hospitalized patients. We found that the median duration of empiric antibiotics (interquartile range) was 6 (4-9) days among 1047 survivivors with pathogen-negative sepsis. These findings suggest that patients with pathogen-negative sepsis could represent an important opportunity for antimicrobial stewardship.

Older age is associated with increased early mortality after transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt.

Introduction & Aim: The role of age as a predictor of mortality after transjugular intra hepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) is controversial. Age has been found to be an important predictor of post-TIPS mortality in some, but not all, studies and is not a component of the MELD score. The purpose of this study was to compare the 90-day survival of subjects with cirrhosis age ≥ 70 years with younger subjects undergoing TIPS.

Progressive statistics for studies in sports medicine and exercise science.

Statistical guidelines and expert statements are now available to assist in the analysis and reporting of studies in some biomedical disciplines. We present here a more progressive resource for sample-based studies, meta-analyses, and case studies in sports medicine and exercise science. We offer forthright advice on the following controversial or novel issues: using precision of estimation for inferences about population effects in preference to null-hypothesis testing, which is inadequate for assessing clinical or practical importance; justifying sample size via acceptable precision or confidence for clinical decisions rather than via adequate power for statistical significance; showing SD rather than SEM, to better communicate the magnitude of differences in means and nonuniformity of error; avoiding purely nonparametric analyses, which cannot provide inferences about magnitude and are unnecessary; using regression statistics in validity studies, in preference to the impractical and biased limits of agreement; making greater use of qualitative methods to enrich sample-based quantitative projects; and seeking ethics approval for public access to the depersonalized raw data of a study, to address the need for more scrutiny of research and better meta-analyses.