Scand J Trauma Resus
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Scand J Trauma Resus · Jul 2020
National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2) on admission predicts severe disease and in-hospital mortality from Covid-19 - a prospective cohort study.
There is a need for validated clinical risk scores to identify patients at risk of severe disease and to guide decision-making during the covid-19 pandemic. The National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2) is widely used in emergency medicine, but so far, no studies have evaluated its use in patients with covid-19. We aimed to study the performance of NEWS2 and compare commonly used clinical risk stratification tools at admission to predict risk of severe disease and in-hospital mortality in patients with covid-19. ⋯ NEWS2 score at hospital admission predicted severe disease and in-hospital mortality, and was superior to other widely used clinical risk scores in patients with covid-19.
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Scand J Trauma Resus · Jul 2020
The rate of short-term revisits after diagnosis of non-specific abdominal pain is similar for surgeons and emergency physicians - results from a single tertiary hospital emergency department.
Acute abdominal pain can be a diagnostic challenge even for experienced surgeons. Delayed diagnosis can lead to higher morbidity, mortality and increased costs. While readmission rate has been used to evaluate quality of surgical care, studies addressing the issue in emergency departments (ED) are rare. The role of emergency physicians in the care of patients with abdominal pain is increasing in many European countries, including Finland. It is not known whether this has an effect on the number of readmissions. Here we evaluate whether the increasing role of emergency physicians in examining patients presenting with abdominal pain has affected the rate of short-term revisits among patients with non-specific abdominal pain (NSAP). ⋯ The rate of short-term revisits in patients with NSAP was altogether low. The increasing role of emergency physicians in the care of acute abdominal patients did not affect the revisit rate.