Safer and more efficient vital signs monitoring protocols to identify the deteriorating patients in the general hospital ward: an observational study.

Background: The frequency at which patients should have their vital signs (e.g. blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation) measured on hospital wards is currently unknown.

Evaluating the performance of the National Early Warning Score in different diagnostic groups.

Background: The National Early Warning Score (NEWS) is used in hospitals across the UK to detect deterioration of patients within care pathways. It is used for most patients, but there are relatively few studies validating its performance in groups of patients with specific conditions.

Methods: The performance of NEWS was evaluated against 36 other Early Warning Scores, in 123 patient groups, through use of the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve technique, to compare the abilities of each Early Warning Score to discriminate an outcome within 24hrs of vital sign recording.

P-POSSUM and the NELA Score Overpredict Mortality for Laparoscopic Emergency Bowel Surgery: An Analysis of the NELA Database.

Background: Risk stratification has become a key part of the care processes for patients having emergency bowel surgery. This study aimed to determine if operative approach influences risk-model performance, and risk-adjusted mortality rates in the United Kingdom.

Methods: A prospectively planned analysis was conducted using National Emergency Laparotomy Audit (NELA) data from December 2013 to November 2018.

Impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the patterns of vital signs recording and staff compliance with expected monitoring schedules on general wards.

Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) placed increased burdens on National Health Service hospitals and necessitated significant adjustments to their structures and processes. This research investigated if and how these changes affected the patterns of vital sign recording and staff compliance with expected monitoring schedules on general wards.

Methods: We compared the pattern of vital signs and early warning score (EWS) data collected from admissions to a single hospital during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic with those in three control periods from 2018, 2019 and 2020.

The performance of the National Early Warning Score and National Early Warning Score 2 in hospitalised patients infected by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Introduction: Since the introduction of the UK's National Early Warning Score (NEWS) and its modification, NEWS2, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has caused a worldwide pandemic. NEWS and NEWS2 have good predictive abilities in patients with other infections and sepsis, however there is little evidence of their performance in COVID-19.

Methods: Using receiver-operating characteristics analyses, we used the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve to evaluate the performance of NEWS or NEWS2 to discriminate the combined outcome of either death or intensive care unit (ICU) admission within 24 h of a vital sign set in five cohorts (COVID-19 POSITIVE, n = 405; COVID-19 NOT DETECTED, n = 1716; COVID-19 NOT TESTED, n = 2686; CONTROL 2018, n = 6273; CONTROL 2019, n = 6523).

Artificial light during the polar night disrupts Arctic fish and zooplankton behaviour down to 200 m depth.

For organisms that remain active in one of the last undisturbed and pristine dark environments on the planet-the Arctic Polar Night-the moon, stars and aurora borealis may provide important cues to guide distribution and behaviours, including predator-prey interactions. With a changing climate and increased human activities in the Arctic, such natural light sources will in many places be masked by the much stronger illumination from artificial light. Here we show that normal working-light from a ship may disrupt fish and zooplankton behaviour down to at least 200 m depth across an area of >0.