Urine culture practices for complicated urinary tract infections in an academic emergency department.

Objective: Complicated UTIs (cUTIs) are defined by a heterogenous group of risk factors that place the patient at increased risk of treatment failure in whom urine cultures are recommended. We evaluated the ordering practices for urine cultures for cUTI patients and patient outcomes in an academic hospital setting.

Methods: Retrospective chart review of adults of 18 years and older with cUTIs diagnosed in a single academic emergency department (ED).

Turn that frown upside down: implementation of a visual cue improves communication during emergency department to inpatient hand-offs.

When a patient is admitted to the hospital from the emergency department (ED), the ED clinician passes on relevant clinical information to the admitting team to transition care, a process known as patient hand-off and commonly referred to as 'calling report'. This information exchange between clinical teams is not only important for care continuity but also signifies a transition of care.However, there are unique challenges in this hand-off process given the unpredictability of the busy ED environment, ED boarding and discontinuity in physician, nursing and transportation workflows.

Utilization and Effect of Direct Medical Oversight during Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest.

Study Objective: Direct medical oversight (DMO), where emergency medical services (EMS) clinicians contact a physician for real-time medical direction, is used by many EMS systems across the United States. Our objective was to characterize the recommendations made by DMO during out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) and to determine their effect on EMS transport decisions and patient outcomes.

Methods: This is a secondary analysis of DMO call recordings from OHCA cases in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area from January 1, 2018 to February 28, 2021.

Applicable or non-applicable: investigations of clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews.

Background: Clinical heterogeneity can be defined as differences in participant characteristics, types or timing of outcome measurements and intervention characteristics. Clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews has the possibility to significantly affect statistical heterogeneity leading to inaccurate conclusions and misled decision making. The aim of this study is to identify to what extent investigators are assessing clinical heterogeneity in both Cochrane and non-Cochrane systematic reviews.

Risk of bias of randomized controlled trials published in orthopaedic journals.

Background: The purpose of this study was to assess the quality of methodology in orthopaedics-related randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published from January 2006 to December 2010 in the top orthopaedic journals based on impact scores from the Thompson ISI citation reports (2010).

Methods: Journals included American Journal of Sports Medicine; Journal of Orthopaedic Research; Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, American; Spine Journal; and Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. Each RCT was assessed on ten criteria (randomization method, allocation sequence concealment, participant blinding, outcome assessor blinding, outcome measurement, interventionist training, withdrawals, intent to treat analyses, clustering, and baseline characteristics) as having empirical evidence for biasing treatment effect estimates when not performed properly.

Interventions designed to prevent anterior cruciate ligament injuries in adolescents and adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are common, result in significant morbidity, and are expensive to repair surgically and to rehabilitate. Several randomized and observational studies have tested neuromuscular interventions as preventive measures for these injuries.

Purpose: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of all known comparative studies for estimating and testing the effect of neuromuscular and educational interventions on the incidence of ACL injuries in adolescents and adults, both male and female.

Report on Honduras: ripples in the pond--the financial crisis and remittances to chronically ill patients in Honduras.

The U.S. financial crisis has affected employment opportunities for Latino immigrants, and this could affect their ability to send financial assistance, or "remittances", to chronically ill family members in their home country.