Surgical site marking does not affect sterility.

Background: In 2005, surgical site marking became mandatory in Australia, with the introduction of the first Australian guidelines to prevent wrong site surgery. It has been our experience that most surgical site marking occurs with the use of a non-sterile marking pen, which has been used on multiple patients and there is little information in the published work about the effects of surgical site marking carried out in this fashion. Our aim was to determine whether the sterility of a surgical site was affected by surgical site marking with a non-sterile surgical marking pen.

Lottery incentives did not improve response rate to a mailed survey: a randomized controlled trial.

Objectives: Our study aimed to examine the effect of an instant lottery ticket incentive on the response rate to a mailed questionnaire in a population of trauma patients.

Study Design And Setting: A randomized controlled trial at a major trauma center with 728 patients randomized into 2 groups prior to mailing of a questionnaire. One group of patients (Group A) had a sentence inserted into the cover letter stating that they would receive a $4 instant lottery ticket upon receipt of a completed questionnaire; Group B did not have an incentive.

The history of dialysis in Singapore.

The last 20 years has been seen the birth of nephrology in Singapore, starting from a single machine in a side room of a ward to a fully fledged unit with a satellite centre. Renal transplantation and hemodialysis have been accepted as a form of therapy for renal failure in Singapore. The spin off from the creation of dialysis units has been improvement in overall renal care particularly in cases of acute renal failure.