Hospital Medicine

Although low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening may be beneficial for some individuals, there are concerns about the potential harms of screening.

For patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), nighttime intensivist staffing is associated with reduced in-hospital mortality in ICUs that have low-intensity daytime staffing.

For patients who undergo instrumented spinal fusion, the rates of infection are higher among those who receive posterior lumbar interbody fusion compared with those who receive posterior or posterolateral fusion.

Palpitations, hypertension, and body mass index (BMI) are predictive of future atrial fibrillation (AF) in both men and women.

The majority of patients with long-bone fractures receive inadequate pain medication in the emergency department, and disparities in management exist.

A variety of pre-, intra-, and postoperative factors contribute to increased length of stay (LOS) for patients who undergo level 1 minimally invasive (MIS) transforaminal interbody fusions (TLIF) spine surgery.

Although the majority of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with status asthmaticus (SA) require mechanical ventilation, the rates of mortality and complications are very low.

Variation in regional hospital readmission rates for congestive heart failure is due more to the availability of care and socioeconomic factors than hospital performance or patients' degree of illness.

Average emergency department wait times for adult patients with psychiatric emergencies is 11.5 hours, and can be even longer for those who are older, uninsured, or intoxicated.

Middle-aged fitness is significantly associated with lower health care charges in older age. Findings persist even after adjusting for other risk factors in both men and women

Patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) who are taken directly to a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI)-capable hospital, even if they have to bypass a closer non-PCI hospital, receive treatment significantly faster than patients who need to be transferred for treatment.

For children in the emergency department, non-private insurance status is associated with decreased diagnostic testing and interventions.

Pediatric content in the labeling of drugs has improved from 1975 to 1999, but still only 46 percent of drug labeling in the electronic Physicians' Desk Reference (ePDR) includes pediatric information.

Hospitals seem to be paying greater attention to preventing targeted health care-associated infections (HAIs) as a result of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) nonpayment policy.

In the past decade there has been an improvement in the accuracy of three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) for measurement of left ventricular (LV) mass.

Clinical studies registered with ClinicalTrials.gov from 2007 and 2010 are predominately small, single-center trials and contain significant heterogeneity in methodology.

Using a weighted risk index, the highest-risk outpatient surgery patients have an almost 20-fold increase in risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) requiring therapy.

Electronic information systems can be used to generate detailed information about blood component use by individual providers and surgical services, and they reveal significant variation in utilization.

Five specific hospital performance strategies have been identified that result in lower 30-day risk-standardized mortality rates (RSMRs) for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

Approval of the antibiotic Levaquin (levofloxacin) has been expanded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to include plague, a rare but deadly bacterial infection.