Association of Interprofessional Discharge Planning Using an Electronic Health Record Tool With Hospital Length of Stay Among Patients with Multimorbidity: A Nonrandomized Controlled Trial.

Importance: Whether interprofessional collaboration is effective and safe in decreasing hospital length of stay remains controversial.

Objective: To evaluate the outcomes and safety associated with an electronic interprofessional-led discharge planning tool vs standard discharge planning to safely reduce length of stay among medical inpatients with multimorbidity.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This multicenter prospective nonrandomized controlled trial used interrupted time series analysis to examine medical acute hospitalizations at 82 hospitals in Switzerland.

Toward a cochlear implant electrode array with shape memory effect for post-insertion perimodiolar positioning.

For cochlear implants (CI) a final position of the electrode array (EA) along the inner wall of the spirally shaped cochlea is considered to be beneficial because it results in a closer proximity to the auditory nerve fibers. A shape memory effect (SME) could facilitate such shift of the EA toward the cochlear inner wall, but its implementation remains to be solved. The current study presents an EA prototype featuring the SME with minute adjustments of the material properties of Nitinol, a shape memory alloy, in combination with a suitable cooling strategy to prevent premature curling.

Consensus care recommendations for alfapump in cirrhotic patients with refractory or recurrent ascites.

Background: The alfapump is an implantable class III medical device that pumps ascitic fluid from the peritoneal space to the urinary bladder from where it is excreted. The pump reduces or abrogates the need for repeated paracentesis in patients with recurrent or refractory ascites.

Aims: To improve outcomes for alfapump implantation and pre- and post-implant patient management in both clinical trial and real-world settings by development of consensus recommendations.

Surgical technique for placement of the automated low flow ascites pump (Alfapump).

Approximately 10% of patients with ascites associated with cirrhosis fail to respond to dietary rules and diuretic treatment and therefore present with refractory ascites. In order to avoid iterative large-volume paracentesis in patients with contraindication to TIPS, the automated low flow ascites pump system (Alfapump) was developed to pump ascites from the peritoneal cavity into the urinary bladder, where it is eliminated spontaneously by normal micturition. This manuscript reports the surgical technique for placement of the Alfapump.