How safe is primary care? A systematic review.

Importance: Improving patient safety is at the forefront of policy and practice. While considerable progress has been made in understanding the frequency, causes and consequences of error in hospitals, less is known about the safety of primary care.

Objective: We investigated how often patient safety incidents occur in primary care and how often these were associated with patient harm.

Global research priorities to better understand the burden of iatrogenic harm in primary care: an international Delphi exercise.

Using a modified Delphi exercise, Aziz Sheikh and colleagues identify research priorities for patient safety research in primary care contexts. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.

Disease-specific health-related quality of life (HRQL) instruments for food allergy: protocol for a systematic review.

Background: The European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology is in the process of developing its Guideline for Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis, and this systematic review is one of seven inter-linked evidence syntheses that are being undertaken in order to provide a state-of-the-art synopsis of the current evidence base in relation to epidemiology, prevention, diagnosis and clinical management, and impact on quality of life, which will be used to inform clinical recommendations. The aim of this systematic review will be to determine which validated instruments can be employed to enable assessment of the impact of, and investigations and interventions for, food allergy on health-related quality of life.

Methods: Seven bibliographic databases were searched from their inception to September 30, 2012 for disease-specific HRQL questionnaires that were specifically designed for use with patients/carers and any articles relating to the description, development and/or the validation of the above identified HRQLs.

Patient safety in orthopedic surgery: prioritizing key areas of iatrogenic harm through an analysis of 48,095 incidents reported to a national database of errors.

Background: With scientific and technological advances, the practice of orthopedic surgery has transformed the lives of millions worldwide. Such successes however have a downside; not only is the provision of comprehensive orthopedic care becoming a fiscal challenge to policy-makers and funders, concerns are also being raised about the extent of the associated iatrogenic harm. The National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) in England and Wales is an underused resource which collects intelligence from reports about health care error.

Analysing the benefits of laparoscopic hernia repair compared to open repair: A meta-analysis of observational studies.

Background: The purpose of this study is to compare the difference of incidence of post-operative complications, operative time, length of stay and recurrence of patients undergoing laparoscopic or open repair of their ventral/incisional hernia a meta-analytic technique for observational studies.

Materials And Methods: A literature search was performed using Medline, PubMed, Embase and Cochrane databases for studies reported between 1998 and 2009 comparing laparoscopic and open surgery for the treatment of ventral (incisional) hernia. This meta-analysis of all the observational studies compared the post-operative complications recurrence rate and length of stay.

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy: device-related errors revealed through a national database.

Laparoscopic techniques represent a key milestone in the development of modern surgery, offering a step change in quality of care, patient satisfaction and efficiency in use of health service resources. Laparoscopy is most widely used for gall bladder surgery. As would be expected with the introduction of any new technology, the early phase of development was accompanied by complications in its use.