OBJECTIVE To determine if infants hospitalized for any reason before 90 days of age are at increased risk for future serious injury. SETTING Washington State. METHODS A population based retrospective cohort study, using data from Washington State birth and death certificates linked to a statewide hospital discharge database for the years 1989 through 1997. Participants included healthy full...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Observation status, in contrast to inpatient status, is a billing designation for hospital payment. Observation-status stays are presumed to be shorter and less resource-intensive, but utilization for pediatric observation-status stays has not been studied. The goal of this study was to describe resource utilization characteristics for patients in observation and inpati...

AIM Our aim was to assess the prevalence and socioeconomic and clinical correlates of drug-drug interactions among the adult population of transitional Kosovo. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted including a representative sample of 1921 patients aged ≥18 years (mean age: 57.8±11.2 years; 50.3% women; overall response: 96%) from the regional hospital of Gjilan, Kosovo, during 2011-2...

BACKGROUND Many influenza vaccine effectiveness estimates have been made using case-control methods. Although several forms of bias may distort estimates of vaccine effectiveness derived from case-control studies, there have been few attempts to quantify the magnitude of these biases. METHODS We estimated the magnitude of potential biases in influenza vaccine effectiveness values derived from...

BACKGROUND Cardiac catheterization is substantially underused among higher-risk patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) with appropriate indications but overused among patients with inappropriate indications. We sought to determine the importance of anticipated benefit and anticipated harm on the use of cardiac catheterization among older patients with AMI. METHODS AND RESULTS We perf...

BACKGROUND Knowing the national disease burden of severe influenza in low-income countries can inform policy decisions around influenza treatment and prevention. We present a novel methodology using locally generated data for estimating this burden. METHODS AND FINDINGS This method begins with calculating the hospitalized severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) incidence for children <5 years...

BACKGROUND We describe human rhinovirus (HRV) detections in SaKaeo province, Thailand. METHODS From September 1, 2003-August 31, 2005, we tested hospitalized patients with acute lower respiratory illness and outpatient controls without fever or respiratory symptoms for HRVs with polymerase chain reaction and molecularly-typed select HRVs. We compared HRV detection among hospitalized patients ...

INTRODUCTION Psychiatric treatment in developed countries has significantly changed in the last few decades, with a significant shortening of the duration of hospitalization. Numerous West European countries are undertaking health system reforms to improve treatment efficiency. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to present the structure of hospitalized patients according to diagnostic categor...

Data regarding risk factors for hospitalization among children with influenza B infection are limited. We conducted a retrospective study of 184 children with influenza B infection during October 2011 - September 2012 seen at Bamrasnaradura Infectious Diseases Institute, Thailand; clinical and laboratory data were compared between hospitalized and outpatient children. The numbers of hospitalize...