Background: Amiodarone is the most effective and commonly used antiarrhythmic medication. Given its risk of toxicity, routine monitoring is recommended but is challenging to ensure in clinical practice.
Methods: We created an intelligent application, built within our electronic health record, that identified every living patient with an active outpatient prescription by a clinician in our health system. The application was designed to identify patients with lapses in recommended monitoring and facilitate scheduling of overdue testing.
Results: The percentage of patients with overdue monitoring tests decreased with use of the application, with greatest improvement in pulmonary function testing.
Discussion: Implementing a program to monitor and mitigate adverse reactions to amiodarone by using programable features of an electronic health record is feasible.
Introduction: Proactive esophageal cooling reduces injury during radiofrequency (RF) ablation of the left atrium (LA) for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). New catheters are capable of higher wattage settings up to 90 W (very high-power short duration, vHPSD) for 4s. Varying power and duration however does not eliminate the risk of thermal injury.
Background: Studies have reported an association between metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and an increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AF). However, the magnitude of the risk and whether this risk varies with the severity of MASLD remains uncertain.
Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched three large electronic databases using predefined keywords to identify cohort studies (published up to 30 September 2024) in which MASLD was diagnosed by liver biopsy, imaging methods, International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, or blood-based scores.
Despite the substantial expenditures on health care in the United States, persistent underperformance in health system metrics necessitates innovative approaches to address complex patient needs. The MedVantage Clinic in New Orleans, Louisiana, offers a regionally tailored, value-based primary care model targeting patients with high social and medical needs. This study provides an evaluation of the efficacy of the MedVantage Clinic in improving the cost of care and service utilization for this population.
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Hudson College of Public Health, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences, Oklahoma City, OK, United States.
Background: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), mainly caused by cigarette smoking, is one of the leading causes of death in the United States (US) and frequent asthma attacks are often exacerbated by cigarette use. Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are often used to quit cigarette smoking. Prevalence of COPD, asthma, cigarette use, and e-cigarette use differs between racial/ethnic groups.
Real-world data are a highly valuable resource in determining the efficacy of novel products in challenging populations, especially in wound care. This study retrospectively analyzed the real-world performance of porcine placental extracellular matrix (PPECM; InnovaMatrix® AC, Convatec Triad Life Sciences, LLC, Memphis, TN, USA), a novel cellular, acellular, and matrix-like product for the management of hard-to-heal wounds. The US Wound Registry (USWR), which comprises aggregated and structured electronic health records from 502 wound practices, provided a deidentified dataset collected from October 10, 2022 to March 25, 2024, containing 76,278 patients (248,278 wounds).
