Total psoas area predicts medium-term mortality after lower limb revascularization.

Background: Analytic morphometry is a novel concept in perioperative risk assessment. Low core muscle mass assessed by morphometry is associated with frailty and has been demonstrated to be an independent predictor of postoperative complications and mortality in oncologic, transplant, and aneurysm surgery. We aimed to study associations between core muscle mass and complication rates, length of hospital stay, and survival after surgical lower limb revascularization.

Impact of specialist care on clinical outcomes for medical emergencies.

General hospitals have commonly involved a wide range of medical specialists in the care of unselected medical emergency admissions. In 1999, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, a 915-bed hospital with a busy emergency service, changed its system of care for medical emergencies to allow early placement of admitted patients under the care of the most appropriate specialist team, with interim care provided by specialist acute physicians on an acute medicine unit - a system we have termed 'specialty triage'. Here we describe a retrospective study in which all 133,509 emergency medical admissions from February 1995 to January 2003 were analysed by time-series analysis with correction for the underlying downward trend from 1995 to 2003.