BACKGROUND Hospitalizations for persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) result in significant health care resource use and excess expenditures. Despite well-documented sociodemographic disparities in COPD outcomes, no study has characterized geographic variations in COPD hospitalization across the US. METHODS Almost 3.8 million COPD hospitalization records were extracted fro...

background: to determine the prevalence of outpatient and hospitalization for cataract surgery in iran. methods: a random cluster sampling was done in a cross-sectional study on cataract surgeries performed in treatment centers of ophthalmology in iran between 2000 and 2005. one week of each season was selected randomly and all cataract surgery files of the center were studied. this study repor...

introduction: according to millennium development goal (mdg) number 4, child mortality should be reduced by two thirds by 2015.  the focus has been on decreasing neonatal deaths in high-mortality countries. in this study, we assessed the recorded causes of neonatal hospitalization in the neonatal intensive care unit (nicu) and infant care wards. methods: the present cross-sectional study was ca...

introduction : the costs of traffic accidents in low- and middle-income countries are estimated to add up to $65 billion annually, which is a little higher than the amount they receive as a final aid for development. the present retrospective study aims to evaluate the treatment costs of the hospitalized injured individuals in traffic accidents. methods: the present study was carried out in ima...

interpretation ondansetron can be considered as an effective agent to decrease the hospitalization rate in infants and children with diarrhea as well as vomiting. injective forms of ondansetron seem to be more achieved than oral forms. results of the 100 individuals who received ondansetron (n = 91) 91% did not need to be hospitalized and 9 patients needed to be admitted in the next 72 hours, w...

BACKGROUND Patients with chronic heart failure (HF) are at increased risk of both fatal and nonfatal major adverse cardiovascular events. We used data from the Candesartan in Heart failure: Assessment of Reduction in Mortality and morbidity (CHARM) trials to assess the influence of nonfatal hospitalizations for HF on subsequent mortality rates in a broad spectrum of HF patients. METHODS AND R...

Pneumonia severity assessment systems, such as the pneumonia severity index (PSI) and CURB-65, were designed to guide physicians to admit the patients involved to appropriate wards of hospitals. This study evaluated concordance rate of decisions leading to patients' hospitalization in accordance with PSI and CURB-65 criteria and comparison of the two systems' P-values in evaluating mortality an...

BACKGROUND Morbidity and mortality rates are high among patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), and recent evidence suggests that this may be linked to inflammation. Current research has also demonstrated the crucial involvement of interleukin-18 (IL-18) in inflammation. In agreement, the activity of IL-18 has been markedly up-regulated in ESRD patients. However, it has not been establish...

BACKGROUND Subjects with non-fatal poisoning may be left with permanent, disabling sequelae, and the resultant long-term use of medical services smay be a burden on the public health care system. The objective of this study was to describe the epidemiology of poisoning in Taiwan from 1999 to 2008. METHODS We analyzed poisoning-related data of mortality rates sourced from official Taiwanese vi...