An attempt was made to provide simple practical guidelines to alert general practitioners to the diagnosis of rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis and lead to early referral to hospital. The duration of illness before referral to this hospital and its effect on outcome in patients with crescentic nephritis were assessed retrospectively from the case notes of 24 patients referred over two year...

BACKGROUND Optimal care of patients is dependent on good professional interaction between general practitioners and general hospital physicians. In Norway this is mainly based upon referral and discharge letters. The main objectives of this study were to assess the quality of the written communication between physicians and to estimate the number of patients that could have been treated at prim...

Background and Objective: Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most form of cardiovascular disease in children. CHD have different presentations, from defects that progress asymptomatically to those with significant symptoms and high mortality. This study was performed to highlight the importance of signs and symptoms to diagnosis of CHD neonates. Materials & Methods: This descriptive analyt...

OBJECTIVE To examine the medical referral pattern of patients received at the Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) in order to inform the process of strengthening the referral system. METHODS The study design was a prospective study conducted at MNH during a 10-week study period from January to March 2004. The study sample consisted of patients referred to MNH. RESULTS Of the 11,412 patients s...

BACKGROUND Ninety-one per cent of primary care trusts were using some form of referral management in 2009, although evidence for its effectiveness is limited. AIM To assess the impact of three referral-management centres (RMCs) and two internal peer-review approaches to referral management on hospital outpatient attendance rates. DESIGN AND SETTING A retrospective time-series analysis of 37...