Hospital grand rounds in Australia.

Objective: To determine whether grand rounds are becoming less common in Australian hospitals.

Design And Participants: Between November 2003 and April 2004, we surveyed 88 clinicians with educational responsibilities in Australian hospitals. A written questionnaire evaluated whether grand rounds were held and how frequently; the structure and percentage of attendees; and the perceived value of grand rounds with regard to education, professional development and general characteristics.

Barriers to prevocational placement programs in rural general practice.

Despite explicit support of the federal and state health departments, most prevocational trainees do not experience general practice or rural medicine. We have been running a program of prevocational placements of trainees working as rural general practitioners under supervision. From our experience, we have identified various barriers to implementation of such programs.

Interstitial lung disease in recent onset rheumatoid arthritis.

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA); however, the prevalence and natural history are undefined. Our aim was to determine the prevalence of ILD associated with RA using a number of sensitive techniques in patients with joint disease of less than 2-yr duration. Patients who met ARA criteria for RA were recruited from community-based and hospital rheumatologists and assessed using the following measures: clinical, lung physiology, radiology (chest X-ray, high resolution CT [HRCT]), bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) and 99mTc-DTPA nuclear scan.

Respiratory insufficiency after abdominal surgery.

The objective of this study was to define the relationship between respiratory insufficiency (RI) and various putative risk factors for patients undergoing abdominal surgery. A review of 1332 adults undergoing abdominal surgery was undertaken. Information was collected in a unbiased, prospective and uniform manner with regard to baseline characteristics, perioperative events and adverse outcomes after surgery.

A case-control study of postoperative pulmonary complications after laparoscopic and open cholecystectomy.

Postoperative pulmonary complications (PPC) are common after upper abdominal surgery. The objective of this case-control study was to compare the incidence of PPC after laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) and open cholecystectomy (OC) within a tertiary care center. Patients were accrued from two sequential clinical trials that evaluated the role of incentive spirometry in the prevention of PPC after abdominal surgery.