Barriers to increase surgical productivity in Sierra Leone: a qualitative study.

Objective: To explore factors influencing surgical provider productivity and identify barriers against and opportunities to increase individual surgical productivity in Sierra Leone, in order to explain the observed increase in unmet surgical need from 92.2% to 92.7% and the decrease in surgical productivity to 1.

Improving Lives in Three Dimensions: The Feasibility of 3D Printing for Creating Personalized Medical Aids in a Rural Area of Sierra Leone.

The aim of this feasibility study was to investigate how a 3D printer could be put to its best use in a resource-limited healthcare setting. We have examined whether a 3D printer can contribute to making prostheses, braces, or splints for patients who underwent major limb amputation because of complex wounds, for example, due to burns and subsequent scarring, accidents, conflicts, or congenital abnormalities. During a 3-month period, we investigated the benefits of customized, 3D-printed arm prostheses, splints, and braces in Sierra Leone.

[Consult Online: digital resource for tropical doctors].

Consult Online is a Dutch telemedicine system for physicians who work in international healthcare and tropical medicine (formerly known as 'tropical doctors'). It provides specialist advice for complicated cases where local specialist services are lacking. Eighty-nine experts from 25 different specialties are available for advice via www.

A clinical risk score to identify patients at high risk of very late stent thrombosis.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine predictors of very late stent thrombosis (VLST; >1 year after stenting), and to evaluate whether addition of these predictors to the dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) score would improve the ability to identify patients at high risk of VLST who might benefit from DAPT.

Background: VLST is a severe complication of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Extended knowledge about the predictors of VLST is needed to prevent this life-threatening complication.