From 2008-2011 to 2012-2015, the percentage of visits for acute viral upper respiratory tract infection that had an antimicrobial ordered or prescribed decreased from 37.1% to 25.5% among emergency departments (EDs) located in nonmetropolitan statistical areas, but this decline was not seen among EDs in metropolitan statistical areas. In 2008-2011, the percentage was higher among nonmetropolita...

INTRODUCTION The goal of this study was to assess the agreement between the results of a respiratory health survey conducted in Montréal on children aged 6 months to 12 years and the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ, Quebec health insurance board) database in terms of the diagnosis of asthma and medical services use. A secondary aim was to evaluate the effect of the survey method us...

In 1996 we established a day hospital dedicated to acute respiratory care, as an alternative to emergency department and inpatient treatment. The unit is staffed by respirologists, family physicians and specialized nurses; patients have access to all standard inpatient treatments and services. Between 1996/97 and 1998/99 the annual number of admissions to the day hospital increased from 658 to ...

Since the first diagnosis of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) caused by the MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2012, sporadic cases and clusters have occurred throughout the country (1). During June-August, 2015, a large MERS outbreak occurred at King Abulaziz Medical City, a 1,200-bed tertiary-care hospital that includes a 150-bed emergency department that reg...

OBJECTIVE The average per person direct cost of illness of cardiorespiratory disease episodes was estimated based on a prospective study of emergency department visits. METHODS Economic modelling of health care costs using prospectively collected resource utilization data (9/1/94 to 8/31/95) from hospital emergency department visitors assigned a diagnosis of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmon...

Context: Asthma is a chronic respiratory illness that is increasing in prevalence among children in the United States. A limited number of studies have examined the relationship between rurality and the prevalence of asthma in minority children, and those studies found mixed results. The aim of this study is to examine urban/rural locality and its impact on asthma episodes and preventable emerg...

[1] Achieving a representative elementary volume (REV) has become a de facto criterion for demonstrating the quality of lCT measurements in porous media systems. However, the data quality implications of an REV requirement have not been previously examined. In this work, deterministic REVs for porosity, moisture saturation (SW), and air-water interfacial area (AI) were estimated using a set of ...

On Mar. 12, 2003, the World Health Organization issued a global alert regarding cases of a severe atypical pneumonia termed "severe acute respiratory syndrome" (or SARS). In Singapore alone, there have been 238 SARS cases and 33 deaths, including 5 health care workers. With modern global inter-connectivity, SARS rapidly spread to become a worldwide phenomenon. This article describes the Singapo...