Impatience with Inpatients: Are Hospitalization Rates Declining for IBD Patients?

Digestive Diseases and Sciences -     

Attention to Inpatients�� Religious and Spiritual Concerns: Predictors and Association with Patient Satisfaction

Background

Little is known about how often patients desire and experience discussions with hospital personnel regarding R/S (religion and spirituality) or what effects such discussions have on patient satisfaction.

Objective, Design and Participants

We examined data from the University of Chicago Hospitalist Study, which gathers sociodemographic and clinical information from all consenting general internal medicine patients at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Main Measures

Primary outcomes were whether or not patients desired to have their religious or spiritual concerns addressed while hospitalized, whether or not anyone talked to them about religious and spiritual issues, and which member of the health care team spoke with them about these issues. Primary predictors were patients’ ratings of their religious attendance, their efforts to carry their religious beliefs over into other dealings in life, and their spirituality.

Key Results

Forty-one percent of inpatients desired a discussion of R/S concerns while hospitalized, but only half of those reported having such a discussion. Overall, 32% of inpatients reported having a discussion of their R/S concerns. Religious patients and those experiencing more severe pain were more likely both to desire and to have discussions of spiritual concerns. Patients who had discussions of R/S concerns were more likely to rate their care at the highest level on four different measures of patient satisfaction, regardless of whether or not they said they had desired such a discussion (odds ratios 1.4–2.2, 95% confidence intervals 1.1–3.0).

Conclusions

These data suggest that many more inpatients desire conversations about R/S than have them. Health care professionals might improve patients’ overall experience with being hospitalized and patient satisfaction by addressing this unmet patient need.KEY WORDS: patient satisfaction, physician/patient communication, quality of care, religion, spirituality     

Managing Beta-blockers in Acute Heart Failure: When to Start and When to Stop?

The role of β-blockers in heart failure has been long debated. Data from chronic heart failure studies clearly indicate that β-blockers save lives. However, data concerning use of β-blockers in patients with acute heart failure are limited, and only recently have emerged to help guide therapy. In this review, we provide an overview of when to stop and when to start β-blockers in patients with acute heart failure.     

Drug-eluting stents for diabetes mellitus: A rush to judgment?

The two pivotal U.S. trials of drug-eluting stents do not establish the principle that these stents are superior to thin-strut bare-metal stents for preventing repeat revascularization in patients with diabetes. Neither study was adequately powered to make this determination. Moreover, both studies used thick-strut stents known to have high restenosis rates as controls. Low angiographic follow-up underestimates the true target lesion revascularization rate in the Polymer-Based Paclitaxel-Eluting Stent in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease (TAXUS-IV) trial because of the high incidence of silent ischemia in patients with diabetes. Optimal therapy for diabetic coronary disease should include a comprehensive approach directed toward metabolic normalization in addition to local stent-based therapy.     

Adherence to Long-Acting Bronchodilators After Discharge for COPD: How Much of the Geographic Variation is Attributable to the Hospital of Discharge and How Much to the Primary Care Providers?

In moderate–severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), long-acting bronchodilators (LBs) are recommended to improve the quality of life. The aims of this study were to measure adherence to LBs after discharge for COPD, identify determinants of adherence, and compare amounts of variation attributable to hospitals of discharge and primary care providers, i.e. local health districts (LHDs) and general practitioners (GPs). This cohort study was based on the Lazio region population, Italy. Patients discharged in 2007–2011 for COPD were followed up for 2 years. Adherence was defined as a medication possession ratio >80%. Cross-classified models were performed to analyse variation. Variances were expressed as median odds ratios (MORs). An MOR of 1.00 stands for no variation, a large MOR indicates considerable variation. We enrolled 13,178 patients. About 29% of patients were adherent to LBs. Adherence was higher for patients discharged from pneumology wards and for patients with GPs working in group practice. A relevant variation between LHDs (MOR = 1.21, p = 0.001) and GPs (MOR = 1.28, p = 0.035) was detected. When introducing the hospital of discharge in the model, the MOR related to LHDs decreased to 1.05 (p = 0.345), MOR related to GPs dropped to 1.22 (p = 0.086), whereas MOR associated with hospitals of discharge was 1.38 (p < 0.001). Treatments with proven benefit for COPD were underused. Moreover, a relevant geographic variation was observed. This heterogeneity raises equity concerns in access to optimal care. The reduction of variability among LHDs and GPs after entering the hospital level proved that differences we observe in primary care partially ‘reflect’ the clinical approach of hospitals of discharge.     

A Systematic Review of Psychological Functioning of Children Exposed to HIV: Using Evidence to Plan for Tomorrow’s HIV Needs

Prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV can virtually eliminate paediatric HIV infection. Studies are needed to understand child development outcomes for children exposed to HIV in utero but born HIV negative (HIV affected children). This systematic review examined cognitive, developmental and behavioural outcomes for HIV affected children compared to control unexposed and uninfected children. Key word searches of electronic databases generated 1,739 hits and 11 studies with adequate quality design and measures of standardised cognitive, behavioural and developmental indices. Cognitive performance, behaviour and developmental delay were measured with 15 different standardised scales from 650 HIV affected children, 736 control children and 205 HIV positive children. Performance scores for HIV affected children were significantly lower than controls in at least one measure in 7/11 studies. An emerging pattern of delay seems apparent. HIV affected children will grow in number and their development needs to be monitored and provided for.     

Advanced polysomnographic analysis for OSA: A pathway to personalized management?

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a highly heterogeneous disorder, with diverse pathways to disease, expression of disease, susceptibility to co‐morbidities and response to therapy, and is ideally suited to precision medicine approaches. Clinically, the content of the information‐rich polysomnogram (PSG) is not currently fully utilized in determining patient management. Novel PSG parameters such as hypoxic burden, pulse transit time, cardiopulmonary coupling and the frequency representations of PSG sensor signals could predict a variety of cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegeneration co‐morbidities. The PSG can also be used to identify key pathophysiological parameters such as loop gain, arousal threshold and muscle compensation which can enhance understanding of the causes of OSA in an individual, and thereby guide choices on therapy. Machine learning methods performing their own parameter extraction coupled with large PSG data sets offer an exciting opportunity for discovering new links between the PSG variables and disease outcomes. By exploiting existing and emerging analytical methods, the PSG may offer a pathway to personalized management for OSA.     

A diagnostic paradigm for resectable liver lesions: to biopsy or not to biopsy?

Background:

Despite a growing body of evidence reporting the deleterious mechanical and oncological complications of biopsy of hepatic malignancy, a small but significant number of patients undergo the procedure prior to specialist surgical referral. Biopsy has been shown to result in poorer longterm survival following resection and advances in modern imaging modalities provide equivalent, or better, diagnostic accuracy.

Methods:

The literature relating to needle-tract seeding of primary and secondary liver cancers was reviewed. MEDLINE, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library were searched for case reports and series relating to the oncological complications of biopsy of liver malignancies. Current non-invasive diagnostic modalities are reviewed and their diagnostic accuracy presented.

Results:

Biopsy of malignant liver lesions has been shown to result in poorer longterm survival following resection and does not confer any diagnostic advantage over a combination of non-invasive imaging techniques and serum tumour markers.

Conclusions:

Given that chemotherapeutic advances now often permit downstaging and subsequent resection of ‘unresectable’ disease, the time has come to abandon biopsy of solid lesions outside the setting of a specialist multi-disciplinary team meeting (MDT).