BACKGROUND Re-admissions to hospital in childhood asthma are common with studies reporting that 25% or more of children will be re-admitted within a year. There is a need for strategies to reduce re-admissions. METHODS A prospective randomised control study of an asthma home management training programme was performed in children aged two years or over admitted with acute asthma. Two hundred ...

Records of 3,449 patients admitted to Karitas Hospital at Waitabula in eastern Indonesia with microscopy-confirmed malaria through 2008 and 2009 were systematically reviewed. Falciparum, vivax, and mixed species malaria occurred among 1,541, 1,837, and 71 admissions, respectively. Among these, 400 (26%), 199 (11%), and 15 (21%) had serious illness. Fatalities occurred in 46 (12%), 18 (9%), and ...

BACKGROUND There is still debate over the benefit of self-management programmes for adults with asthma. A brief self-management programme given during a hospital admission for acute asthma was tested to determine whether it would reduce readmission. METHOD A randomised controlled trial was performed in 280 adult patients with acute asthma admitted over 29 months. Patients on the self-manageme...

BACKGROUND Measuring the quality of hospital admission care is essential to ensure that standards of practice are met and continuously improved to reduce morbidity and mortality associated with the illnesses most responsible for inpatient deaths. The Paediatric Admission Quality of Care (PAQC) score is a tool for measuring adherence to guidelines for children admitted with acute illnesses in a ...

OBJECTIVES To identify care settings associated with greater pressure ulcer risk in elderly patients with hip fracture in the postfracture period. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING Nine hospitals that participate in the Baltimore Hip Studies network and 105 postacute facilities to which patients from these hospitals were discharged. PARTICIPANTS Hip fracture patients aged 65 and ol...

OBJECTIVE To describe the impact of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza (nH1N1) on Indigenous people in the Top End of the Northern Territory at community, hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) levels. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS We analysed influenza notifications for the Top End from 1 June to 31 August 2009, as well as data on patients admitted through Top End emergency departments with a...

BACKGROUND Bronchiolitis is a significant cause of acute morbidity in the first 12 months of life and some infants with bronchiolitis are admitted to hospital. No studies have yet devised a scoring system to predict admission for routine use in the emergency department. AIM To identify clinical predictors of hospital admission in infants with acute bronchiolitis and to devise a simple clinica...

BACKGROUND To validate the use of the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) for predicting admission of patients revisiting the Emergency Department (ED) within 72 hours. METHODS Non-trauma patients aged above 17 years old who revisited an urban ED within 72 hours during January of 2004 were included in this retrospective observational study. Demographic data, diagnosis, CCI, in-hospital mortality...