The paper introduces the special issue by linking the International Spinal Cord Injury (InSCI) Community Survey study to the Learning Health System for SCI Initiative (LHS-SCI). The LHS-SCI was designed to respond to the implementation challenge of bringing about policy reform in light of the targeted policy recommendations of World Health Organization's International Perspectives on SCI report...

The objective of this study was to develop a semantically labeled hedonic scale (LHS) that would yield ratio-level data on the magnitude of liking/disliking of sensation equivalent to that produced by magnitude estimation (ME). The LHS was constructed by having 49 subjects who were trained in ME rate the semantic magnitudes of 10 common hedonic descriptors within a broad context of imagined hed...

One of the key applications of operational research in health systems management is to improve the mechanism of resource allocation and program planning in order to increase the system efficiency. This study seeks to offer an innovative method for the planning and scheduling of health service units with the aim of reducing the patients' Length of Stay (LOS) in the Cardiac Surgery Ward of Razavi...

Unlike their British counterparts, Soviet health care planners have long adhered to a strategy of adding to the number of hospital beds each year. Consequently, the proportion of the population admitted to hospital has grown steadily; by 1983 this had reached the historically high level of 2477%. Although the extra capacity has been advantageous in several respects, it can scarcely have encoura...

CMAJ • NOVEMBER 23, 2010 • 182(17) © 2010 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors 1831 We have intuitively known for a long time that poor nutritional status in disease is associated with mor bidity and mortality. Only recently, however, have studies provided evidence of an association between poor nutritional status and prolonged hospital stay, decreased quality of life, and increased mo...

This study was conducted to evaluate the ability of AN-DRG version 3.1 to predict variation in patients' length of stay in hospital (LOS) and identify other factors that can influence the LOS by using routinely collected hospital morbidity data. A total of 18 DRGs that comprised 4,589 episodes were analysed. Multiple regression was used to model length of stay as a function of a number of indep...

The present report describes a case of Laugier-Hunziker syndrome (LHS), a rare benign condition. A patient with LHS develops acquired melanotic pigmentation of the lips and buccal mucosa, often with pigmentation of the nails occurring. No systemic symptoms are associated with this syndrome. Normally, no treatment is required for this condition, unless for aesthetic reason, mainly due to pigment...

Background: Pressures arising from premature infant care specially hospitalized infant can affect infant's quality of life and health by causing long term destructive effects on family's psychological and physical health. Aim:To investigate the effect of family participation on mother's general health and length of hospitalization of premature neonate. Methods: In this clinical trial 60 primipa...