Establishing an open and robotic pancreatic surgery program in a level 1 trauma center community teaching hospital and comparing its outcomes to high-volume academic center outcomes: a retrospective review.

Background: The debate of whether to centralize hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery has been ongoing. The principal objective was to compare outcomes of a community pancreatic surgical program with those of high-volume academic centers.

Methods: The current pancreatic surgical study occurred in an environment where (1) a certified abdominal transplant surgeon performed all surgeries; (2) complementary quality enhancement programs had been developed; (3) the hospital's trauma center had been verified; and (4) the hospital's surgical training had been accredited.

Donor preoperative oxygen delivery and post-extubation hypoxia impact donation after circulatory death hypoxic cholangiopathy.

Aim: To evaluate donation after circulatory death (DCD) orthotopic liver transplant outcomes [hypoxic cholangiopathy (HC) and patient/graft survival] and donor risk-conditions.

Methods: From 2003-2013, 45 DCD donor transplants were performed. Predonation physiologic data from UNOS DonorNet included preoperative systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, pH, SpO2, PaO2, FiO2, and hemoglobin.

Trauma activation patients: evidence for routine alcohol and illicit drug screening.

Background: Statistics from the National Trauma Data Bank imply that discretionary blood alcohol and urine drug testing is common. However, there is little evidence to determine which patients are appropriate for routine testing, based on information available at trauma center arrival. In 2002, Langdorf reported alcohol and illicit drug rates in Trauma Activation Patients.

Emergency department noninvasive (NICOM) cardiac outputs are associated with trauma activation, patient injury severity and host conditions and mortality.

Background: Anoninvasive cardiac output (CO) monitor (NICOM), using Bioreactance technology, has been validated in several nontrauma patient studies. We hypothesized that NICOM CO would have more significant associations with clinical conditions than would systolic blood pressure (sBP).

Methods: This is a prospective observational study of consecutive trauma activation patients during the first 10 to 60 minutes after emergency department arrival.

Attenuated hypocholesterolemia following severe trauma signals risk for late ventilator-associated pneumonia, ventilator dependency, and death: a retrospective study of consecutive patients.

Background: Post-traumatic ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a substantial clinical problem that increases hospital costs and typically adds to the duration of mechanical ventilation. We evaluated the impact of VAP on ventilator days. We also assessed 48-hour total blood cholesterol (TC) and other potential risk factors for the development of VAP.