Internal and emergency medicine
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Checklists can improve adherence to standardized procedures and minimize human error. We aimed to test if implementation of a checklist was feasible and effective in enhancing patient care in an emergency department handling internal medicine cases. We developed four critical event checklists and confronted volunteer teams with a series of four simulated emergency scenarios. ⋯ All participants rated the checklist as useful and 22 of 24 participants would use the checklist in real life. Checklist use had no influence on CPR quality. The use of context-specific checklists showed a statistically significant influence on team performance and simulated patient outcome and contributed to adherence to standard clinical practices in emergency situations.
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Admission hyperglycemia (AH) is associated with worse prognosis in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Controversy remains whether the impact of AH differs among patients previously diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM). We retrospectively evaluated consecutive patients admitted in a coronary care unit with AMI, from 2006 to 2014. ⋯ After multivariate analysis, group 4 was associated with the worst prognosis (HR 3.103, p < 0.001) followed by group 3 (HR 1.639, p = 0.002) and group 2 (HR 1.557, p = 0.039), when compared to group 1. When groups were stratified by type of AMI, patients in group 2 had a worse prognosis than patients in group 3 in the case of non-ST-segment elevation AMI. AH is associated with higher all-cause mortality in patients with AMI, irrespective of previous diabetic status.
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In diabetes mellitus (DM), glycaemic fluctuations associate with higher oxidative stress than sustained chronic hyperglycaemia and glucose variability increases the risk of chronic diabetic complications. Our hypothesis was that higher glucose variability would associate with mortality after an acute heart failure (HF) episode. We retrospectively analysed patients with DM hospitalized with acute HF between 2009 and 2010. ⋯ This association with more than twofold higher short-term mortality was independent of main confounders. Elevated glycaemic variability in acute HF admissions of patients with DM predicts short-term mortality. Patients with GCV > 30.0% have an independent more than twofold higher risk of 6-month death after an acute HF hospitalization.