Irish journal of medical science
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Multicenter Study
The workload distribution of acute stroke CT imaging in a level three hospital in Ireland.
Interventions for acute ischaemic stroke require brain imaging. Computerised tomography (CT) scanning is the most common method used. In this study, the aim was to investigate the CT workload of acute stroke in an Irish level 3 hospital, seeing approximately 200 acute strokes per year. ⋯ Acute stroke imaging constitutes a relatively small portion of the out-of-hour CT workload. Due to the emergency status of these scans, providing an acute stroke radiology service requires radiology staff to operate with extremely short response times 24 h a day.
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Multicenter Study
Head and neck injury in major trauma in Ireland: a multicentre retrospective analysis of patterns and surgical workload.
Head and neck injuries are common in major trauma patients, but the prevalence is poorly documented in the literature. This study aims to investigate this further, particularly in the context of increasing development of Irish and European trauma systems. ⋯ A substantial number of Irish major trauma patients of all ages and genders sustain some form of head and neck injury. It produces significant injury and surgical workload involving input from multiple disciplines.
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Irish health services have been repurposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Critical care services have been re-focused on the management of COVID-19 patients. This presents a major challenge for specialities such as cardiothoracic surgery that are reliant on intensive care unit (ICU) resources. ⋯ In March and April of 2020, the spread of COVID-19 and the resultant focus on its management resulted in a reduction in cardiothoracic surgery service delivery.
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In August 2019, 3848 children in Ireland were faced with emergency homelessness [1]. In recent years, lack of affordable housing, unemployment and shortage of rental properties have been the primary driving factors for the potentially devastating impact of familial homelessness in our society [1]. Our aim was to evaluate current knowledge on the psychological impact of homelessness in children. ⋯ Our study highlights violence, aggression and poor academic learning outcomes to be just some of the key findings in our review of homelessness in childhood, worldwide. Unfortunately, there has been minimum research to date on paediatric homelessness within the context of the Irish population. We anticipate this review to be the first chapter in a multipart series investigation to evaluate the psychological morbidity of paediatric homelessness within the Irish Society.
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There is no randomized controlled trial that demonstrated the efficacy of antiviral therapy against COVID-19 yet. However, physicians are prescribing different drugs to a large part of COVID-19 population in the hope they will cure them. This does not reflect the evidence-based medicine approach. What we need is more evidence-based knowledge about what routine care practices we should to apply to ameliorate symptoms of patients and fight COVID-19 pathology.