Internal and emergency medicine
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The detrimental effects of increased length of stay at the emergency department (ED-LOS) for patient outcome have been sparsely studied in the Swedish setting. Our aim was to further explore the association between ED-LOS and short-term mortality in patients admitted to the EDs of two large University hospitals in Sweden. All adult patients (> 18 years) visiting the ED at the Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden, from 1/1/2010 to 1/1/2015 (n = 639,385) were retrospectively included. ⋯ For patients with highest triage priority level the opposite was at hand, with decreasing mortality risk with increasing quintile of ED-LOS for 7-day mortality, and lower mortality for the two highest quintile of ED-LOS for 30-day mortality. In patients not admitted to in-hospital care higher ED-LOS was associated with higher mortality. Our data suggest that increased ED-LOS could be associated with slightly increased short-term mortality in patients with lower clinical urgency and dismissed from the ED.
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Mortality risk in COVID-19 patients is determined by several factors. The aim of our study was to adopt an integrated approach based on clinical, laboratory and chest x-ray (CXR) findings collected at the patient's admission to Emergency Room (ER) to identify prognostic factors. Retrospective study on 346 consecutive patients admitted to the ER of two North-Western Italy hospitals between March 9 and April 10, 2020 with clinical suspicion of COVID-19 confirmed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase reaction chain test (RT-PCR), CXR performed within 24 h (analyzed with two different scores) and recorded prognosis. ⋯ Patients over 75 years had three other predictors in 35% cases against 10% for others [p < 0.0001, RR = 3.5 (1.9-6.4)]. The greatest risk of death from COVID-19 was age above 75 years, worsened by elevated CRP and CXR score and reduced P/F. Prompt determination of these data at admission to the emergency department could improve COVID-19 pretreatment risk stratification.
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Polypharmacy represents a major clinical and public health issue in older persons. We aimed to measure the prevalence of polypharmacy, and the main predictors of drug prescription in nursing home residents. Post hoc analyses of the "Incidence of pNeumonia and related ConseqUences in nursing home Residents" (INCUR) study were conducted. ⋯ The prevalence of polypharmacy is high among older persons living in nursing home. Age and FI are significantly associated with the number of drugs. The number of prescribed drugs tends to decrease with age, whereas a direct association with frailty is reported.
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The psychometric properties of the core disease-specific 14-item Italian HeartQoL health-related quality of life questionnaire have been evaluated in this study. The Italian version of the HeartQoL, the MacNew questionnaire, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale were completed by 472 patients (angina, N = 183; myocardial infarction, N = 167; or ischemic heart failure, N = 122) who were recruited in five Italian centers (Florence, Veruno, Turin, Udine, and Naples) between 2015 and 2017. Patients with myocardial infarction reported significantly higher HeartQoL scores than patients with angina or ischemic heart failure. ⋯ Convergent and divergent validity were confirmed. Discriminative validity was not confirmed for age, largely confirmed for sex, and fully confirmed for anxiety, depression, and distress. The Italian HeartQoL questionnaire demonstrated adequate key psychometric attributes of internal consistency reliability and validity in Italian-speaking patients with ischemic heart disease.
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The decision on treatment after a first venous thromboembolism (VTE) to prevent recurrences may be influenced by many factors. The prospective, observational, WHITE study aimed to analyze how this issue was tackled in every-day clinical practice in various countries, which have sensibly different socio-economic conditions and healthcare systems. Doctors active in 79 Internal or Vascular clinical centers in 7 countries (China, Czechia, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, and Tunisia) enrolled VTE patients after the maintenance treatment phase. ⋯ In conclusion, some differences in VTE patient management were found between countries. The provoked/unprovoked nature of the index event, instead, was not the prevalent criterion to drive the decision on extension of anticoagulation, without large variations between countries. DOACs were the most widely used anticoagulant drugs, whereas > 25% of patients received antithrombotic drugs instead of anticoagulants as extended treatment.