OBJECTIVES To investigate the relationship between access block in the emergency department (ED) (defined as total time from arrival to transfer from the ED over eight hours) and inpatient length of stay (LOS). DESIGN AND SETTING Retrospective cohort study of all admissions through the ED to a tertiary hospital in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, during 1999. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES To...

BACKGROUND The increasing incidence of hip fractures in our aging population challenges orthopedic surgeons and hospital administrators to effectively care for these patients. Many patients present to regional hospitals and are transferred to tertiary care centres for surgical management, resulting in long delays to surgery. Providing timely care may improve outcomes, as delay carries an increa...

OBJECTIVE Determine the incidence of major bleeding events, their risk factors, and their impact on prognosis in Jordanian patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Evaluate the ability of the CRUSADE bleeding risk score (BRS) to predict major bleeding. METHODS Major bleeding events were defined according to the CRUSADE classification and their incidence was evaluated from...

Introduction / objectives Official reports of Mongolia indicate that hospitalacquired infections (HAI) occur in 0.01–0.05% of all hospital admissions. This is considerably lower than internationally reported rates. There have been no published HAI prevalence studies from Mongolia. We aimed to determine the first accurate estimate of HAI prevalence in two tertiary hospitals of Ulaanbaatar and to...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate, for the first time, the characteristics of patients with acute asthma who died during hospitalization in Spain and Latin America, as well as to evaluate factors associated with asthma mortality. METHODS A retrospective review of hospital records of 3,038 patients with asthma (aged 15-69 years) admitted to nineteen tertiary care hospitals in Spain and in eight Latin-Amer...

Background. Medical emergency teams (METs) or rapid response teams (RRTs) facilitate early intervention for clinically deteriorating hospitalized patients. In healthcare systems where financial resources and intensivist availability are limited, the establishment of such teams can prove challenging. Objectives. A low-cost, ward-based response system was implemented on a medical clinical teachin...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of multidrug resistance (MDR) among gram-negative bacilli is rapidly increasing. Quantification of the prevalence and the common antimicrobial coresistance patterns of MDR gram-negative bacilli (MDR-GNB) isolates recovered from patients at hospital admission, as well as identification of patients with a high risk of harboring MDR-GNB, would have important implications ...

BACKGROUND To examine the rates of evidence-supported care provided in an obstetrics-gynaecology unit. METHODS The main diagnosis-intervention set was established for a sample of 325 consecutive inpatient admissions in 1998-99 in a prospective study in a UK tertiary care centre. A comprehensive literature search was conducted to obtain the evidence supporting the intervention categorised acco...

Since 2002, an epidemic of Clostridium difficile infections has occurred in southern Quebec, Canada. At Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the incidence of C. difficile infections increased from 11/1,000 admissions (1999 to 2002) to 27/1,000 admissions (2003 to 2005). We compared the exposures and outcomes for patients infected with strains with different ribopatterns isola...

AIMS To determine the impact of a paediatric medical emergency team (MET) on cardiac arrest, mortality, and unplanned admission to intensive care in a paediatric tertiary care hospital. METHODS Comparison of the retrospective incidence of cardiac arrest and death during 41 months before introduction of a MET service with the prospective incidence of these events during 12 months after its int...