Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Comparative Study
Impact of seasonal and pandemic influenza on emergency department visits, 2003-2010, Ontario, Canada.
Weekly influenza-like illness (ILI) consultation rates are an integral part of influenza surveillance. However, in most health care settings, only a small proportion of true influenza cases are clinically diagnosed as influenza or ILI. The primary objective of this study was to estimate the number and rate of visits to the emergency department (ED) that are attributable to seasonal and pandemic influenza and to describe the effect of influenza on the ED by age, diagnostic categories, and visit disposition. A secondary objective was to assess the weekly "real-time" time series of ILI ED visits as an indicator of the full burden due to influenza. ⋯ Influenza appears to have had a much larger effect on ED visits than was captured by clinical diagnoses of influenza or ILI. Throughout the study period, ILI ED visits were strongly associated with excess respiratory complaints. However, the relationship between ILI ED visits and the estimated effect of influenza on ED visits was not consistent enough from year to year to predict the effect of influenza on the ED or downstream in-hospital resource requirements.
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The objective was to investigate clinician knowledge of and attitudes toward clinical decision support (CDS) and its incorporation into the electronic health record (EHR). ⋯ EPs incorporated pediatric head trauma CDS via the EHR into their clinical judgment in a hypothetical scenario and reported favorable opinions of CDS in general and their inclusion into the EHR.
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Burns are common injuries that can result in significant scarring, leading to poor function and disfigurement. Unlike mechanical injuries, burns often progress both in depth and in size over the first few days after injury, possibly due to inflammation and oxidative stress. A major gap in the field of burns is the lack of an effective therapy that reduces burn injury progression. Because stem cells have been shown to improve healing in several injury models, the authors hypothesized that species-specific mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) would reduce injury progression in a rat comb-burn model. ⋯ Intravenous injection of rat MSCs reduced burn injury progression in a rat comb-burn model.