Provider density and health system facility factors and their relationship to rates of pediatric perforated appendicitis in US counties.

Objective: To examine whether density of providers or health care facility factors have a significant effect on the rates of perforated appendicitis in the pediatric population.

Design: A retrospective database analysis. Data were linked to the Area Resource File to determine if there was an association between perforated appendicitis and density of provider and facility factors.

Report of 2,087,915 surgical admissions in U.S. children: inpatient mortality rates by procedure and specialty.

Background: Mortality rates for eight surgical procedures have been endorsed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as part of the Inpatient Quality Indicators developed to assist hospitals in identifying potential problem areas and as an indirect measure of quality for inpatient adult surgical care. Little to no broad information relating to the overall mortality relating to the surgical care of children is available. An analysis providing national data on the most common procedures performed in children and their associated mortality would be useful in beginning to create benchmarks for standards of surgical care in the pediatric patient.

An open-access microfluidic model for lung-specific functional studies at an air-liquid interface.

In an effort to improve the physiologic relevance of existing in vitro models for alveolar cells, we present a microfluidic platform which provides an air-interface in a dynamic system combining microfluidic and suspended membrane culture systems. Such a system provides the ability to manipulate multiple parameters on a single platform along with ease in cell seeding and manipulation. The current study presents a comparison of the efficacy of the hybrid system with conventional platforms using assays analyzing the maintenance of function and integrity of A549 alveolar epithelial cell monolayer cultures.