BMJ : British medical journal
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Multicenter Study
Reducing accident death rates in children and young adults: the contribution of hospital care. Steering Committee of the Major Trauma Outcome Study Group.
To assess the contribution of trauma care to the recent decline in accident death rates among children and young people. ⋯ Reductions in hospital case fatality have made an important contribution to reaching the Health of the Nation targets. The contribution of hospital care in the reduction of accident mortality should be taken into account in decisions about the allocation of resources to preventive and curative services.
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To investigate the ratio of inhaled corticosteroid to bronchodilator as a measure of the quality of asthma prescribing by general practitioners. ⋯ Although the corticosteroid:bronchodilator ratio may be a valid indicator of the quality of prescribing for individual patients with asthma, caution should be applied in interpreting aggregated ratios. Differences in the severity of asthma or the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may explain inconsistent associations between admission rates for asthma and corticosteroid:bronchodilator ratios in family health services authorities and general practices with different deprivation scores.