Decadal Cycles in the Human Cardiovascular System.

Seven of the eight authors of this report each performed physiologic self-surveillance, some around the clock for decades. We here document the presence of long cycles (decadals, including circaundecennians) in the time structure of systolic (S) and diastolic (D) blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR). Because of the non-stationary nature in time and space of these and other physiologic and environmental periodic components that, like the wind, can appear and disappear in a given or other geographic location at one or another time, they have been called "Aeolian".

Predicting the Crohn's disease activity index from the Harvey-Bradshaw Index.

Background: The Crohn's Disease Activity Index (CDAI) was developed in the 1970s to assess the degree of illness in individuals with Crohn's disease and has since been used widely in clinical trials of the condition. The Harvey-Bradshaw Index (HBI) is a simplification of the CDAI, designed to make data collection and computation easier. It is purported, on the basis of a 0.

Identifying patient preoperative risk factors and postoperative adverse events in administrative databases: results from the Department of Veterans Affairs National Surgical Quality Improvement Program.

Background: The Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) employs trained nurse data collectors to prospectively gather preoperative patient characteristics and 30-day postoperative outcomes for most major operations in 123 DVA hospitals to provide risk-adjusted outcomes to centers as quality indicators. It has been suggested that routine hospital discharge abstracts contain the same information and would provide accurate and complete data at much lower cost.

Study Design: With preoperative risks and 30-day outcomes recorded by trained data collectors as criteria standards, ICD-9-CM hospital discharge diagnosis codes in the Patient Treatment File (PTF) were tested for sensitivity and positive predictive value.