Specialist Palliative Care is More Than Drugs: A Retrospective Study of ILD Patients

Background  

This study aimed to assess the palliative care needs of progressive idiopathic fibrotic interstitial lung disease (PIF-ILD) populations in two London ILD centres.     

Admission inflammatory markers and isolation of a causative organism in patients with spontaneous spinal infection

Introduction

The purpose of this study was to investigate the significance of the inflammatory markers on admission in the isolation of a causative pathogen in patients with spinal infection. Spinal infection is treated frequently at spinal units and can encompass a broad range of clinical entities. Its diagnosis is often delayed because of the difficulty of identifying the responsible pathogen.

Methods

Patients with spinal infection treated in our institution over a period of eight years were identified and their notes studied retrospectively. Admission C-reactive protein (CRP), white cell count (WCC) as well as co-morbidities and mode of pathogen identification were recorded. Overall, 96 patients were included in the study.

Results

The CRP levels on admission were correlated significantly with the overall potential for isolation of a pathogen (p<0.0001) and positive biopsy cultures (p=0.0016). Admission WCC levels were associated significantly with the overall potential for isolation of a pathogen (p=0.0003) and positive biopsy cultures (p=0.0023). Both CRP and WCC levels were significantly negatively correlated with the duration of the preceding symptoms (p=0.0003 and p<0.0001 respectively). Delay in presentation was significantly negatively correlated with organism isolation (p=0.0001). Multivariate analyses identified the delay in presentation as the strongest independent variable for organism isolation (p=0.014) in cases of spontaneous spinal infection when compared with the admission CRP level (p=0.031) and WCC (p=0.056).

Conclusions

In spontaneous spinal infection, delay in presentation is the strongest independent variable for organism isolation. High inflammatory marker levels on admission are a useful prognostic marker for the overall potential of isolating a causative organism either by blood cultures or by biopsy in patients with negative blood cultures. Furthermore, the admission inflammatory marker levels allow for treating surgeons to counsel their patients of the likelihood of achieving a positive microbiological yield from biopsy.     

Refractory ventricular fibrillation complicating acute myocardial infarction terminated by intracoronary stenting

We report on a case of intractable recurrent ventricular fibrillation that responded poorly to antiarrhythmic medication and balloon angioplasty, but resolved instantaneously following intracoronary stenting. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

CT colonography: interpretative performance in a non-academic environment

AIM: To investigate interpretative accuracy and reporting time for radiologists performing computed tomography (CT) colonography in day-to-day non-academic clinical practice. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirteen radiologists from seven centres, who were reporting CT colonography in non-academic daily clinical practice, interpreted a dataset of 15 colonoscopically validated cases in a controlled environment. Ten cases had either a cancer or polyp >10mm; one case had a medium polyp and four were normal. Correct case categorization and interpretation times were compared using analysis of variance to aggregated results obtained from both experienced observers and observers recently trained using 50 cases, working in an academic environment. The effect of experience was determined using Spearman's rank correlation. RESULTS: Individual accuracy was highly variable, range 53% (95% CI 27-79%) to 93% (95% CI 68-100%). Mean accuracy overall was significantly inferior to experienced radiologists (mean 75 versus 88%, p=0.04) but not significantly different from recently trained radiologists (p=0.48). Interpretation time was not significantly different to experienced readers (mean 12.4 min versus 11.7, p=0.74), but shorter than recently trained radiologists (p=0.05). There was a significant, positive, linear correlation between prior experience and accuracy (p<0.001) with no plateau. CONCLUSION: Accuracy for sub-specialist radiologists working in a non-academic environment is, on average, equivalent to radiologists trained using 50 cases. However, there is wide variability in individual performance, which generally falls short of the average performance suggested by meta-analysis of published data. Experience improves accuracy, but alone is insufficient to determine competence.     

Early goal-directed therapy: a UK perspective

The surviving sepsis campaign developed guidelines in 2003 that were designed to increase physician awareness of sepsis and to develop a series of recommendations for the management of the patient with sepsis. The guidelines had the support of 11 international professional organisations across a variety of specialties, and advocate aggressive, early goal-oriented resuscitation in appropriate patients.     

How Should Nations Measure the Quality of End‐of‐Life Care for Older Adults? Recommendations for an International Minimum Data Set

Nations face numerous challenges in providing high-quality end-of-life care for their citizens, and an aging population that has a prolonged trajectory of decline and substantial needs for care magnifies these challenges. As nations begin to address these challenges, it will be essential to determine whether their responses are effective, but current national data collection efforts are sporadic, and data are often collected only for patients who receive care through certain funding programs or provider organizations or in selected sites of care. Therefore, governments do not know whether their citizens are receiving adequate care, whether current programs are improving care, or how their outcomes compare with those of other countries. This article describes the importance of developing national minimum data sets that can be used to assess the quality of end-of-life care that older adults receive and recommends key variables that these data sets should include.