Why do paramedics choose to bring patients to a private emergency department?

Objective: While prior experience, favourable location and anticipation of high quality care are known to influence patient choice to attend a private ED, it is likely that decision-making is also influenced by other persons. In particular, patients arriving by ambulance are under the care of paramedics, whose values towards healthcare and rationale for choosing one ED over another have not been studied. This study aimed to describe reasons why paramedics choose to bring patients to a private ED.

Emergency department 'undercrowding' is associated with decreased waiting times.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a sudden and sustained decrease in patient presentations on waiting times and other measures of workload and flow following the opening of a large, greenfields ED adjacent to our own.

Method: A descriptive study involving all patients presenting to a private urban district hospital ED for two 60 day periods, immediately before and after the opening of the tertiary hospital ED. Changes in median waiting time, case-mix distribution, method of arrival, total admissions and total waiting time were compared pre-opening and post-opening.

Why do patients choose to attend a private emergency department?

Objective: Understanding the reasons patients decide to attend a particular acute care service, and their expectations of that service, is important in providing optimal patient care. The present study aimed to determine factors influencing patient decisions to attend a private Australian ED, an issue that has not been previously addressed in the literature.

Methods: Semi-structured face-to-face interviews with ED patients, purposively sampled to broadly reflect the departmental caseload and casemix.

Volitional control of neural activity relies on the natural motor repertoire.

Background: The results from recent brain-machine interface (BMI) studies suggest that it may be more efficient to use simple arbitrary relationships between individual neuron activity and BMI movements than the complex relationship observed between neuron activity and natural movements. This idea is based on the assumption that individual neurons can be conditioned independently regardless of their natural movement association.

Results: We tested this assumption in the parietal reach region (PRR), an important candidate area for BMIs in which neurons encode the target location for reaching movements.

Blood cultures ordered in the adult emergency department are rarely useful.

Objectives: Although blood cultures are commonly ordered in the emergency department, there is controversy about their utility. This study aimed to determine the usefulness of blood cultures in the management of patients presenting to a tertiary adult teaching hospital emergency department in Perth, Western Australia.

Methods: A detailed chart review was undertaken of all blood cultures taken in our emergency department over a 2-month period.

A functional comparison of the venom of three Australian jellyfish--Chironex fleckeri, Chiropsalmus sp., and Carybdea xaymacana--on cytosolic Ca2+, haemolysis and Artemia sp. lethality.

Cnidarian venoms produce a wide spectrum of envenoming syndromes in humans ranging from minor local irritation to death. Here, the effects of Chironex fleckeri, Chiropsalmus sp., and Carybdea xaymacana venoms on ventricular myocyte cytosolic Ca2+, haemolysis and Artemia sp.

Comprehensive analysis of human immunodeficiency virus type 1-specific CD4 responses reveals marked immunodominance of gag and nef and the presence of broadly recognized peptides.

Increasing evidence suggests that human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-specific CD4 T-cell responses contribute to effective immune control of HIV-1 infection. However, the breadths and specificities of these responses have not been defined. We screened fresh CD8-depleted peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from 36 subjects at different stages of HIV-1 infection for virus-specific CD4 responses by gamma interferon enzyme-linked immunospot assay, using 410 overlapping peptides spanning all HIV-1 proteins (based on the clade B consensus sequence).

Mutually antagonistic effects of androgen and activin in the regulation of prostate cancer cell growth.

Activin, a member of the TGFbeta superfamily, is expressed in the prostate and inhibits growth. We demonstrate that the effects of activin and androgen on regulation of prostate cancer cell growth are mutually antagonistic. In the absence of androgen, activin induced apoptosis in the androgen-dependent human prostate cancer cell line LNCaP, an effect suppressed by androgen administration.

Jellyfish envenoming syndromes: unknown toxic mechanisms and unproven therapies.

Interest in envenoming syndromes caused by Australian jellyfish has been intense since the deaths in early 2002 of two tourists in Queensland, attributed to the Irukandji syndrome. We review current knowledge of these envenoming syndromes, mechanisms of venom action and therapy, focusing on the deadly box jellyfish, Chironex fleckeri, and the array of jellyfish thought to cause the Irukandji syndrome. Current understanding of jellyfish venom activity is very limited, and many treatments are unproven and based on anecdote.