Disparities in Mortality of Hispanic Patients with Cystic Fibrosis in the United States. A National and Regional Cohort Study.

Rationale: Patients of Hispanic origin with cystic fibrosis (CF) are the largest growing minority, representing 8.5% of patients with CF in the United States. No national survival analysis of this group has ever been undertaken.

Multitasking simulation: Present application and future directions.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education lists multi-tasking as a core competency in several medical specialties due to increasing demands on providers to manage the care of multiple patients simultaneously. Trainees often learn multitasking on the job without any formal curriculum, leading to high error rates. Multitasking simulation training has demonstrated success in reducing error rates among trainees.

Can a resident's publication record predict fellowship publications?

Background: Internal medicine fellowship programs have an incentive to select fellows who will ultimately publish. Whether an applicant's publication record predicts long term publishing remains unknown.

Methods: Using records of fellowship bound internal medicine residents, we analyzed whether publications at time of fellowship application predict publications more than 3 years (2 years into fellowship) and up to 7 years after fellowship match.

A clinical trial comparing physician prompting with an unprompted automated electronic checklist to reduce empirical antibiotic utilization.

Objectives: To determine whether face-to-face prompting of critical care physicians reduces empirical antibiotic utilization compared to an unprompted electronic checklist embedded within the electronic health record.

Design: Random allocation design.

Setting: Medical ICU with high-intensity intensivist coverage at a tertiary care urban medical center.

A decade of reversal: an analysis of 146 contradicted medical practices.

Objective: To identify medical practices that offer no net benefits.

Methods: We reviewed all original articles published in 10 years (2001-2010) in one high-impact journal. Articles were classified on the basis of whether they addressed a medical practice, whether they tested a new or existing therapy, and whether results were positive or negative.

The diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary embolism: a metaphor for medicine in the evidence-based medicine era.

Background: The history of pulmonary embolism (PE) provides a fascinating portrait of a well-established diagnosis and standard of care treatment moving into the age of evidence-based medicine.

Methods: We examined the history of PE and the practice of treating PE with anticoagulation.

Results: Pulmonary embolism is a diagnostic category whose definition and treatment have both changed in the past century.

Multisite analysis of 177 consecutive primary breast augmentations: predictors for reoperation.

Background: Plastic surgeons and manufacturers of breast implants have been examining the complication and reoperation rates of primary breast augmentations for more than 18 years. The seemingly high rates reported by the manufacturers to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were the impetus for this multicenter study.

Objective: This paper reports on data pooled from three plastic surgery practices that were geographically distributed across the United States and examines the reoperation rate, time to reoperation, the reason for reoperation, and specific complications in 177 consecutive primary breast augmentation patients.