Objective Most electronic health record systems provide laboratory test results to patients in table format. We tested whether presenting such results in visual displays (number lines) could improve understanding. Materials and Methods We presented 1620 adults recruited from a demographically diverse Internet panel with hypothetical results from several common laboratory tests, first showing ...

INTRODUCTION Non-urgent visits comprise a significant proportion of visits to most emergency departments (EDs). Given the severe overcrowding issues faced by many EDs, the use of the Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) to identify patients who could be managed elsewhere seems to be an obvious way to reduce the pressure on the ED and "solve" the overcrowding problem. O...

Introduction: In this study, we sought to illustrate our experience in urgent surgical management for embolized cardiac septal occlude devices resulting from trans-catheter closure of atrial septal defect and ventricular septal defect. Mathrials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed four patients aged 2–10 years who underwent urgent surgery due to cardiac septal occluder embolization between...

OBJECTIVE The Paediatric Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (PaedCTAS) stipulates that febrile patients who are 3 to 36 months old should be triaged to the PaedCTAS 3 "urgent" category. To optimize resource use, we implemented a protocol enabling these children to be down-triaged to the PaedCTAS 4 "less urgent" category if there was no sign of toxicity. Our objective was to evaluate the safety of...

Patients presenting late in the course of kidney disease who require urgent initiation of dialysis have traditionally received temporary vascular catheters followed by hemodialysis. Recent changes in Medicare payment policy for dialysis in the USA incentivized the use of peritoneal dialysis (PD). Consequently, the use of more expeditious PD for late-presenting patients (urgent-start PD) has rec...

BACKGROUND Urgent or emergent status is often associated with increased risk among cardiac operations. The objective of this study was to analyze outcomes and cost differences in patients undergoing elective versus urgent or emergent mitral valve replacement (MVR) and repair operations. METHODS From 2003 to 2008, 1,477 patients underwent isolated, primary mitral valve (MV) operations at 11 di...