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The End of the Paper Trail: One Pediatric Hospital's Experience with the Transition to a Fully Electronic Health RecordSurveys show that more than 90% of US hospitals do not use even a basic EHR, despite the improvements to efficiency, care coordination, and patient safety to be gained by implementing an EHR. Some hospitals, however, have been quick to recognize the benefits of EHRs, and have already taken steps to prepare for a paperless future.
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More Moderate Risk Patients Pick Contralateral Prophylactic MastectomyMany patients who chose mastectomy were not at increased breast-cancer risk and may have done so based on a failed attempt at breast-conservation surgery.
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Diabetes Care: Should Statins Be the Only Treatment?When you weigh the potential benefits to the patient against the risk of treatment-related adverse effects and drug-drug interactions, most diabetic patients will benefit from treatment with statins.
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Don't Let Your Cancer Patients Take the Fall!Patient falls and falls with injury are serious preventable problems in hospitals and are among the measures employed as standard metrics of the quality of nursing care; they are included in both The National Quality Forum (NQF) National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Hospital Care: An Initial Performance Measure Set and The Institute for Healthcare Improvement�s National Patient Safety Goals. Injuries and death associated with patient falls while being cared for in a health care facility are classifi ed by the NQF as �serious reportable events�.
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Illuminating Clinical ConundrumsAfter a brutal winter, particularly for those in the Midwest and on the East Coast, spring is finally in the air. I hope everyone had a nice spring break with their families and is eager to read some insightful material on cardiology.
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QOL and Invasive vs. Noninvasive Treatment in Intermittent ClaudicationObstructive peripheral artery disease (PAD) manifests itself with intermittent claudication (affecting 20 to 40 million individuals worldwide), which is described as exertional lower extremity pains, and in more advanced stages with critical limb ischemia and acute or chronic limb ischemia. Irrespective of presentation, patients with PAD are at increased risk for adverse cardiovascular (CV) events. Therefore, risk factor modification is the cornerstone of the management of PAD.
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White-coat hypertension and progression to home hypertensionOur study aimed to clarify whether white-coat hypertension represents a transient state in the development of hypertension outside medical settings. We followed up 128 subjects with white-coat hypertension and compared their risk of progression to home hypertension with that of 649 sustained normotensive subjects. After 8 years of follow-up, subjects with white-coat hypertension had an approximately 3-fold higher risk of eventually manifesting home hypertension. We concluded that patients with white-coat hypertension should be carefully monitored.
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Increased risk of major clinical events late after treatment with drug-eluting stentsWe compared the incidence of late clinical events after withdrawal of clopidogrel between subjects treated with drug-eluting stents (DES) and those treated with bare-metal stents. Death and myocardial infarction occurred more frequently among DES-treated subjects during the follow-up period. The results of this study indicate that there may be a penalty for the lower rate of restenosis and reinterventions after DES implantation, in particular, an increased rate of late stent thromboses.
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Diabetes-related poor outcomes in chronic heart failure: Complex interactions with sex and ageThis propensity-matched study, in which patients with and without diabetes were well balanced in all measured baseline characteristics, including traditional risk factors and comorbidities, found that diabetes was associated with increased mortality and hospitalization in ambulatory patients who had chronic, mild-to-moderate heart failure and were receiving angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors. These findings also highlight the sex- and age-related variations in the effect of diabetes in these patients.
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Thanksgiving in the United States, Shaking Off the NegativesThis week, the people in the United States take their turn at giving thanks. We, in Canada, did this last month – the first Monday of October every year. It’s nice to pause and give thanks at least once a year, but I think we should be doing it all year long.
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NIH Launches Study to Find Best ART Regimen for Pregnant HIV PatientsThe international study will compare the World Health Organization's recommended regimen against 2 others.
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Something to sleep onEvidence is mounting that getting enough sleep is a key to preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Migraine Prevention Moves Into Focus With New Clinical TrialsStudies offer hope that CGRP antibodies will lead to better treatment for disabling headaches.
