Articles: hospital-emergency-service.
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Background and Objectives: The aim of this study is to compare the performance of six clinical physiological-based scores, including the pre-endoscopy Rockall score, shock index (SI), age shock index (age SI), Rapid Acute Physiology Score (RAPS), Rapid Emergency Medicine Score (REMS), and Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS), in predicting in-hospital mortality in elderly and very elderly patients in the emergency department (ED) with acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding (AUGIB). Materials and Methods: Patients older than 65 years who visited the ED with a clinical diagnosis of AUGIB were enrolled prospectively from July 2016 to July 2021. The six scores were calculated and compared with in-hospital mortality. ⋯ A subgroup analysis was performed for a total of 180 very elderly patients (i.e., older than 75 years), of whom 27 died. MEWS also had the best predictive performance in this subgroup (AUC, 0.82). Conclusions: This simple, rapid, and obtainable-by-the-bed parameter could assist emergency physicians in risk stratification and decision making for this vulnerable group.
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Meta Analysis
Shock index as predictor of massive transfusion and mortality in patients with trauma: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Management of bleeding trauma patients is still a difficult challenge. Massive transfusion (MT) requires resources to ensure the safety and timely delivery of blood products. Early prediction of MT need may be useful to shorten the time process of blood product preparation. The primary aim of this study was to assess the accuracy of shock index to predict the need for MT in adult patients with trauma. For the same population, we also assessed the accuracy of SI to predict mortality. ⋯ Our study demonstrated that SI may have a limited role as the sole tool to predict the need for MT in adult trauma patients. SI is not accurate to predict mortality but may have a role to identify patients with a low risk of mortality.
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Access to emergency medical care in Ontario has been under stress, mainly due to a lack of human resources (staffing of nurses and doctors). Over the past year, several emergency departments in Ontario have closed. Some of these closures are nightly, while others have closed for weeks at a time, leaving Ontario residents without access to emergency medical care which can lead to poor or more severe outcomes. The purpose of this paper was to examine how closures of ED's in Ontario have influenced potential access to emergency medical care. ⋯ ED closures have led to decreases in potential access to emergency care for predominantly rural populations. Health human resource recovery strategies must focus on areas where lack of overlap exists.
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It is unclear whether highly fragmented ambulatory care (i.e., care spread across multiple providers without a dominant provider) increases the risk of an emergency department (ED) visit. Whether any such association varies with race is unknown. ⋯ Highly fragmented ambulatory care was an independent predictor of ED visits, especially among Black individuals.