Standard of Care for Hand Trauma: Where Should We Be Going?

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, an unfunded mandate for emergency hospital physician coverage, combined with falling reimbursement and escalating medico-legal risk, has resulted in declining enthusiasm for specialty coverage to emergency rooms. In a South West Florida community of 150,000, limited hand surgeons necessitated modification of acute on-call duties for hand trauma, whereby the hospital emergency room personnel performed evaluation and wound management with telephonic consultation followed by referral and definitive care in the outpatient setting by the hand surgeon. The policy for hand care, triage, management, and transfer is reviewed, as well as the first year experience with this highly efficient management methodology for urgent and emergent hand problems. In establishing a county-wide standard of care, emergency rooms and hand surgeons are coordinated to deliver excellent care by treatment protocol.     

Thirty-Year Experience with Bilateral Internal Thoracic Artery Grafting: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?

As a profession, surgery is well into its fourth decade of experience with bilateral internal thoracic artery (BITA) grafting for the treatment of ischemic cardiovascular disease. Numerous compelling retrospective analyses appear to have documented a clear benefit for BITA grafting over the use of a single internal thoracic artery (SITA) graft in reducing the long-term risk of mortality, cardiac mortality, and cardiac events. Despite this wealth of literature and scientific as well as clinical investigation, the chilling fact remains that the STS database reports that less than 4% of coronary bypass (CABG) operations involve the use of BITA grafting. The historic, physiologic, and clinical aspects of BITA grafting are reviewed. Clinical challenges and technical advances are addressed. The future of BITA grafting is explored, both from a research perspective and from a clinical point of view.     

Going the distance for procurement of donation after circulatory death livers for transplantation—Does reimbursement reflect reality?

Donation after circulatory death (DCD) liver transplantation (LT) has increased slowly over the past decade. Given that transplant surgeons generally determine liver offer acceptance, understanding surgeon incentives and disincentives is paramount. The purpose of this study was to assess aggregate travel distance per successful DCD versus deceased after brain death (DBD) liver procurement as a surrogate for surgeon time expenditure and opportunity cost. All consecutive liver offers made to Michigan Medicine from 2006 to 2017 were analyzed. Primary outcome was the summative travel distance (spent on all attempted procurements) per successful liver procurement that resulted in LT. Donation after circulatory death liver offer acceptance was lower than DBD liver offers, as was proportion of successful procurements among accepted offers. Overall, 10 275 miles were travelled for accepted DCD liver offers, resulting in 23 successful procurements (mean 447 miles per successful DCD liver procurement). For accepted DBD liver offers, 197 299 miles were travelled, resulting in 863 successful procurements (mean 229 miles per successful DBD liver procurement). On average, each successful DCD liver procurement required 218 more miles of travel than each successful DBD liver procurement. Current reimbursement policies poorly reflect increased surgeon travel (and time) expenditures between DCD and DBD liver offers.