Effect of dysphasia and dysphagia on inpatient mortality and hospital length of stay: a database study.

Objectives: To examine the effect of dysphasia and dysphagia on stroke outcome.

Design: Retrospective database study.

Setting: Norfolk, United Kingdom.

Cognition, continence and transfer status at the time of discharge from an acute hospital setting and their associations with an unfavourable discharge outcome after stroke.

Background: Current demographic trends pose a major societal challenge due to the rising number of older people with chronic conditions such as stroke. The relative impact of various disabilities at the time of discharge from an acute unit on discharge outcome is poorly understood.

Objective: To examine the association between cognition, continence and transfer status at the time of discharge from the acute stroke unit and discharge destination.

Winter excess in hospital admissions, in-patient mortality and length of acute hospital stay in stroke: a hospital database study over six seasonal years in Norfolk, UK.

Background: Several studies have examined the incidence and mortality of stroke in relation to season. However, the evidence is conflicting partly due to variation in the populations (community vs. hospital-based), and in climatic conditions between studies.

Utilisation of diagnostic computerised tomography imaging and immediate clinical outcomes in older people with stroke before and after introduction of the National Service Framework for older people. A comparative study of hospital-based stroke registry data (1997-2003): Norfolk experience.

Introduction: how the National Service Framework (NSF) for older people in England might be associated with changes in clinically relevant stroke outcome has not been investigated. We looked for changes in computerised tomography (CT) scan rate, inpatient case-fatality rate (CFR), length of acute hospital stay and discharge destination for older people with stroke, compared with their younger counterparts, for a period before, and after, the introduction of the NSF.

Methods: two periods, 4 years before and 2 years after the publication of the NSF, were selected to compare the above outcomes between three age categories: < 65, 65-84 and > or = 85 years of age.

Expression of Haemophilus ducreyi collagen binding outer membrane protein NcaA is required for virulence in swine and human challenge models of chancroid.

Haemophilus ducreyi, the etiologic agent of the sexually transmitted genital ulcer disease chancroid, has been shown to associate with dermal collagen fibers within infected skin lesions. Here we describe NcaA, a previously uncharacterized outer membrane protein that is important for H. ducreyi collagen binding and host colonization.

A humoral immune response confers protection against Haemophilus ducreyi infection.

Haemophilus ducreyi is the etiologic agent of the sexually transmitted genital ulcer disease chancroid. Neither naturally occurring chancroid nor experimental infection with H. ducreyi results in protective immunity.