Clozapine: How Well Are We Monitoring Patients?

Infective endocarditis: how well are we managing our patients?

Infective endocarditis remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the U.S., with an estimated number of 10–15,000 new cases being diagnosed each year (1). Although the number of cases of infective endocarditis occurring as a result of rheumatic disease is diminishing, this reduction in cases has been replaced by an increased incidence of endocarditis among intravenous drug users and ol...

Hypertension control: how well are we doing?

BACKGROUND We compared blood pressure (BP) control in a recent cohort of hypertensive military veterans with BP control in a previous cohort and examined whether hypertension treatment practices, as defined by the frequency of antihypertensive medication dosage increases, have changed over time. METHODS We abstracted 1999 outpatient chart data including visit type, BP measurements, comorbidit...

Perinatal and infant postmortem examinations: how well are we doing?

AIM To investigate the quality of perinatal and infant necropsies and assess the relation between the quality and value of this investigation in different outcome groups. METHODS Cohort analysis of 540 deaths during 1993 of babies between 20 weeks' gestation and one year of age born to women usually resident in Wales. Cases were identified from the All Wales Perinatal Survey. Each case was as...

Management of congestive heart failure: how well are we doing?

Chest tube complications: how well are we training our residents?

BACKGROUND Thoracic trauma is commonly treated with tube thoracostomy. The overall complication rate associated with this procedure is up to 30% among all operators. The primary purpose of this study was to define the incidence and risk factors for complications in chest tubes placed exclusively by resident physicians. The secondary objective was to outline the rate of complications occult to p...