Improving primary percutaneous coronary intervention performance in an urban minority population using a quality improvement approach.

It has been well established that there are racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular care. Quality improvement initiatives have been recommended to proactively address these disparities. An initiative was implemented to improve timeliness of and access to primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures among myocardial infarction patients at an academic medical center serving a predominantly minority population.

Migration of the Günther Tulip inferior vena cava filter to the chest.

The authors describe two cases in which Günther Tulip inferior vena cava filters migrated to the chest, necessitating open-heart surgery for retrieval. In the first case, a 52-year-old man was transferred to their hospital from an outside facility after the filter migrated to the main pulmonary artery during attempted filter placement. In the second case, a 72-year-old man, a Günther Tulip filter was found to have migrated to the tricuspid valve after cardiopulmonary arrest and subsequent resuscitation, including emergent central venous line placement.

Mature rapid response system and potentially avoidable cardiopulmonary arrests in hospital.

Objective: To study the incidence, outcome and potentially avoidable causes of inpatient cardiopulmonary arrests in a hospital with a "mature" rapid response system (RRS).

Design: Retrospective observational study of all cardiopulmonary arrest events in 2005.

Setting: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Presbyterian Hospital, a 730-bed academic, urban, tertiary care adult hospital in the USA.

Findings of the first consensus conference on medical emergency teams.

Background: Studies have established that physiologic instability and services mismatching precede adverse events in hospitalized patients. In response to these considerations, the concept of a Rapid Response System (RRS) has emerged. The responding team is commonly known as a medical emergency team (MET), rapid response team (RRT), or critical care outreach (CCO).

Medical emergency teams: a strategy for improving patient care and nursing work environments.

Aim: This paper reports a study of nurses' perceptions about medical emergency teams and their impact on patient care and the nursing work environment.

Background: In many acute care hospitals, nurses can summon emergency help by calling a medical emergency team, which is a team of expert critical care professionals adept at handling patient crisis scenarios. Critical care nurses form the core of such teams.

Impact of patient monitoring on the diurnal pattern of medical emergency team activation.

Objective: To study the impact of time of day, day of week and level of patient monitoring on medical emergency team (MET) activation.

Design: Retrospective observational study of all MET and cardiac arrest events between October 2001 and March 2005.

Setting: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Presbyterian Hospital, a tertiary care teaching facility in the United States.