BACKGROUND Lower respiratory infection (LRI) is the leading cause of hospitalization for nursing home residents, but hospitalization is costly and may cause complications. OBJECTIVE We sought to compare mortality and cost between episodes of LRI initially treated in the hospital versus the nursing home after controlling for illness severity and the probability of hospitalization. DESIGN Thi...

Research on children with Joubert syndrome has focused on brain structural abnormalities and associated clinical symptoms. The degree of developmental delay has not been objectively reported. We investigated the neurobehavioral development of children with Joubert syndrome through neurobehavioral assessment in the largest sample to date. Thirty-two parents of children with Joubert syndrome comp...

OBJECTIVE To examine the long term survival of critically ill patients admitted to an intensive therapy unit and to ascertain the effects of age, severity of illness, and diagnostic category at admission on survival. DESIGN Retrospective observational study with prospectively gathered data on all patients admitted to the unit between June 1985 and July 1987 and followed up until 1 January 198...

OBJECTIVE Little is known about the sociocultural determinants of mental illness at hospital presentation. Our objective was to examine ethnic differences in illness severity at hospital admission among Chinese, South Asian, and the general population living in Ontario, Canada. METHODS We conducted a large, population-based, cross-sectional study of psychiatric inpatients aged from 19 to 105 ...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to evaluate parents' capability to assess their febrile child's severity of illness and decision to present to the emergency department. We compared children referred by a general practitioner (GP) with those self-referred on the basis of illness-severity markers. METHODS This was a cross-sectional observational study conducted at the emergency departments...

BACKGROUND Illness severity scores are commonly employed in critically ill patients to predict outcome. To date, prior scores for post-cardiac arrest patients rely on some event-related data. We developed an early, novel post-arrest illness severity score to predict survival, good outcome and development of multiple organ failure (MOF) after cardiac arrest. METHODS Retrospective review of dat...

OBJECTIVE Few studies have addressed use of resources in police interventions involving individuals with mental illness. The time police officers spend on interventions is a straightforward measure with significant administrative weight, given that it addresses human resource allocation. This study compared the characteristics of police interventions involving individuals with mental illness an...