OBJECTIVE To determine the time spent and income lost by patients and their households for seeking tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment in Bauchi State-Nigeria. METHOD A cross sectional study where 242 TB patients were sampled from 27 out of 67 facilities providing TB services in a north-eastern state of Nigeria. Sampling was stratified based on facility type, patients' HIV status and gender....

BACKGROUND hospital-acquired pneumonia poses a hazard to older people who are hospitalised, yet few data exist on the incidence or risk factors in non-intensive care patients. This study aimed to determine the incidence of hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) in a sample of hospitalised older people. METHODS prospective survey of hospitalised older patients (>65 years) at a single centre over a ...

OBJECTIVE Emergency department (ED) patients hospitalised with a suspected infection have an increased risk for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). This study aims to identify independent predictors of MACE after hospital admission which could be used for identification of high-risk patients who may benefit from preventive strategies. SETTING Dutch tertiary care centre and urban hospi...

Acutelly-ill hospitalised medical patients are at risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), both in-hospital and in the immediate post-discharge period, and mortality from VTE is thought to be particularly high in this patient population. However, despite previous mandates from international antithrombotic guidelines such as those of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) for the "universa...

BACKGROUND In a proportion of patients with HIV-associated tuberculosis who develop paradoxical immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS), the clinical course of IRIS is prolonged necessitating substantial health care utilization for diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. Prolonged TB-IRIS has not been prospectively studied to date. We aimed to determine the proportion of patients w...

BACKGROUND Evidence from studies conducted in Western countries indicates that a significant proportion of hospital beds are occupied by patients who experience a delayed hospital discharge (DHD). However, evidence about this topic is lacking in Italy, and little is known on the patients' and organisational characteristics that influence DHDs. Therefore, we carried out a survey in all the hospi...

The natural history of venous thromboembolism (VTE), its impact on outcome and the rationale for prophylaxis are well established for hospitalised, acutely ill medical patients [1–10], but are less clear for nonhospitalised immobilised patients. Current guidelines for antithrombotic therapy recommend the use of prophylaxis in hospitalised, acutely ill medical patients, and suggest against its u...