JAMA network open
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effects of a Telehealth Early Palliative Care Intervention for Family Caregivers of Persons With Advanced Heart Failure: The ENABLE CHF-PC Randomized Clinical Trial.
Family caregivers of persons with advanced heart failure perform numerous daily tasks to assist their relatives and are at high risk for distress and poor quality of life. ⋯ This 2-site randomized clinical trial of a telehealth intervention for family caregivers of patients with advanced heart failure, more than half of whom were African American and most of whom were not distressed at baseline, did not demonstrate clinically better quality of life, mood, or burden compared with usual care over 16 weeks. Future interventions should target distressed caregivers and assess caregiver effects on patient outcomes.
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Multicenter Study
Association Between Early Recovery of Kidney Function After Acute Kidney Injury and Long-term Clinical Outcomes.
The severity of acute kidney injury (AKI) is usually determined based on the maximum serum creatinine concentration. However, the trajectory of kidney function recovery could be an additional important dimension of AKI severity. ⋯ This study suggests that the 72-hour period immediately after AKI distinguishes the risk of clinically important kidney-specific long-term outcomes. The identification of different AKI recovery patterns may improve patient risk stratification, facilitate prognostic enrichment in clinical trials, and enable recognition of patients who may benefit from nephrology consultation.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effect of Intensivist Communication in a Simulated Setting on Interpretation of Prognosis Among Family Members of Patients at High Risk of Intensive Care Unit Admission: A Randomized Trial.
Discordance about prognosis between a patient's health care decision-making surrogate and the treating intensivist is common in the intensive care unit (ICU). Empowering families, friends, and caregivers of patients who are critically ill to make informed decisions about care is important, but it is unclear how best to communicate prognostic information to surrogates when a patient is expected to die. ⋯ These findings suggest that family members interpret indirect or redirection responses to questions about prognosis in the ICU setting as more optimistic than direct responses.
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On October 1, 2015, the US transitioned to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) for recording diagnoses, symptoms, and procedures. It is unknown whether this transition was associated with changes in diagnostic category prevalence based on diagnosis classification systems commonly used for payment and quality reporting. ⋯ These findings suggest that the ICD-10-CM transition was associated with large prevalence changes for many diagnostic categories. Diagnostic classification systems developed using ICD-9-CM may need to be refined using ICD-10-CM data to avoid unintended consequences for disease surveillance, performance assessment, and risk-adjusted payments.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Sensitivity of Continuous Electroencephalography to Detect Ictal Activity After Cardiac Arrest.
Epileptiform electroencephalographic (EEG) patterns are common after resuscitation from cardiac arrest, are associated with patient outcome, and may require treatment. It is unknown whether continuous EEG monitoring is needed to detect these patterns or if brief intermittent monitoring is sufficient. If continuous monitoring is required, the necessary duration of observation is unknown. ⋯ Compared with continuous EEG monitoring, brief intermittent monitoring was insensitive for detection of epileptiform events. Monitoring EEG results significantly improved multimodality prediction of neurological outcome, but continuous monitoring appeared to add little additional information compared with brief intermittent monitoring.