Crohn's disease patient characteristics in a tertiary referral center: comparison with patients from a population-based cohort.

Objectives: Data on the clinical presentation, effects of therapy and prognosis of patients with Crohn's disease are often based on patients from specialized referral centers. We assessed the extent of the selection based on the clinical and demographic characteristics.

Methods: All patients with Crohn's disease presenting to the University Hospital of Regensburg (Medical Department) were analyzed retrospectively with respect to demographic and disease specific characteristics.

[Use of computer applications to support clinical processes. An electronic letter of discharge as resource for DRG-relevant coding].

Not long ago forensic aspects where the major driving force to complete and correct medical documentation. Diagnosis related groups becoming basic data for billing of hospital treatment in Germany now extremely extend the need for complex administrative documentation over-ruling all medical documentary needs. Due to unchanged personnel resources in hospitals and due to a lack of comfortable tools supporting these documentary needs medical personnel in most hospitals is confronted with an annoying effort to fulfill these needs.

[The art of medicine].

Not too long ago, obtaining a patient's history and performing a physical examination was the beginning of every doctor-patient interaction. Today, impressing technical methods--extending the human "diagnostic horizon" to an unbelievable level of astonishing perception--are easily available in most places. So the question comes up whether clinical findings still have relevance in common medical practice.

[German physicians' access to professional knowledge. Acceptance, quality and availability of professional information with special reference to electronic information media].

Background And Purpose: The growing relevance of continuous medical education is evident. Also information retrieval helping to solve clinical problems yet at the patient's bedside becomes more and more important. This study challenges common and coming methods of information retrieval applied by German physicians.

[Effects of contemporaneous control of DRG-relevant coding by physicians].

Objective: In a prospective study we analysed the quality of ICD-coding in clinical everyday life of a department for internal medicine.

Methods: A skilled intern--the so-called DRG assistant--was temporarily released from clinical work. Over nine weeks he had to control all diagnoses contemporaneously that were ICD-coded by his colleagues on admission and discharge of their patients.

Six different strains of Neisseria meningitidis in a case with meningococcal sepsis and five contact persons in a boys' home.

Background: It is routine practice to provide chemoprophylaxis for close contacts of a patient infected with meningococci.

Patients: When a 17-year-old boy living in a boys' home was admitted to the hospital with septic shock caused by Neisseria meningitidis, we immediately identified contact persons in the boys' home.

Results: 104 contact persons were identified and screened for oropharyngeal colonization.

Pumpless extracorporeal lung assist - experience with the first 20 cases.

Objective: Long-term extracorporeal lung assist is limited by a significant mechanical blood trauma resulting in bleeding and hemolysis. To reduce the drawbacks of extracorporeal lung assist a new technique has been developed, by which the driving force for the extracorporeal circuit derives from the patients arterio-venous pressure gradient (pumpless extracorporeal lung assist). The aim of this clinical study was to test the feasibilty and effectiveness of pumpless extracorporeal lung assist in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome.