Can Patient Record Summarization Support Quality Metric Abstraction?

We present a pre/post intervention study, where HARVEST, a general-purpose patient record summarization tool, was introduced to ten data abstraction specialists. The specialists are responsible for reviewing hundreds of patient charts each month and reporting disease-specific quality metrics to a variety of online registries and databases. We qualitatively and quantitatively investigated whether HARVEST improved the process of quality metric abstraction.

Preformed donor-specific antibodies and risk of antibody-mediated rejection in repeat renal transplantation.

Background: Allograft outcomes in patients undergoing repeat renal transplantation are inferior compared to first-time transplant recipient outcomes. Donor-specific antibodies detected by solid-phase assays (DSA-SPA) may contribute to the worse prognosis. The influence of DSA-SPA on repeat renal transplantation outcomes has not been previously studied in detail.

Diabetes, body mass index, and outcomes in hepatocellular carcinoma patients undergoing liver transplantation.

Unlabelled: For many cancers, features of the metabolic syndrome, such as diabetes and obesity, have been associated with both increased risk of cancer development and poor outcomes.

Methods: We examined a large retrospective cohort of 342 consecutive patients who underwent liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma between January 1999 and July 2010 at our institution. We evaluated the relationship between diabetes, obesity, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) recurrence, and overall survival.