A Qualitative Approach to Explore Perceptions, Opinions and Beliefs of Communities who Experienced Health Disparities towards Chronic Health Conditions.

The prevalence of chronic medical conditions is associated with biological, behavioral, and social factors. In Puerto Rico (PR), events such as budget cuts to essential services in recent years have contributed to deepening health disparities. This study aimed to explore community perceptions, opinions, and beliefs about chronic health conditions in the southern region of Puerto Rico.

Commonly diagnosed mental disorders in a general hospital system.

Background: Considering many patients receive care from general hospitals, these healthcare institutions are uniquely situated to address mental and physical health needs. Little is documented, however, on the common current mental disorders diagnosed in patients receiving care in general hospital settings, especially in Puerto Rico. The objective of this study was to characterize the five most common current DSM-5 mental disorder diagnoses made in patients receiving non-psychiatric medical and surgical care from a general hospital system in southern Puerto Rico between January 2015 and December 2019.

[Usefulness of clinical prediction rules for ruling out deep vein thrombosis in a hospital emergency department].

Objectives: To compare the efficacy of the most familiar clinical prediction rules in combination with D-dimer testing to rule out a diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in a hospital emergency department.

Material And Methods: Retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the case records of all patients attending a hospital emergency department with suspected lower-limb DVT between 1998 and 2002. Ten clinical prediction scores were calculated and D-dimer levels were available for all patients.

Is time to search the Wells Score 4.0?

Background: Wells score for deep vein thrombosis presents problems for implementation in the hospital emergencies, mainly due to the complexity of its enforcement.

Objective: To assess whether the inclusion of D-dimer as a predictor might lead to a simplification of this clinical decision rule.

Patients And Methods: A database of deep vein thrombosis patients was studied by logistic regression model in which the 10 predictors in the Wells score and the dimer D were included.