CONTEXT The performance of each ICU needs to be assessed within the overall context of medical care, as well as by the institution which the ICU forms part of. Evaluation mechanisms in the field of intensive care have been developed that are recognized worldwide within the scientific literature. OBJECTIVE To study outcomes from groups of critical patients and to compare their actual and estim...

Objective: To evaluate the effect of adding concurrent computerized documentation of comorbid conditions to standard medical record review on the severity of illness index and risk of mortality index. • Design: Cross-sectional study. • Setting and participants: 377 surgical patients at 2 academic centers undergoing inpatient surgery from September 2004 to January 2005. Standard medical record r...

background: in order to describe the patients and evaluate the effectiveness of treatments for widow spider envenomation, investigators require a reliable assessment tool. in this paper, the development of a clinical index for measuring the widow spider bite severity, latrodectus envenomation severity score (less), is described. methods: according to the valid methods for index development, a d...

background: multiple sclerosis (ms) is a neurological disease with fatigue as most prevalent symptom. psychopathological symptoms, physical and mental dysfunctions and body mass abnormalities potentially could deteriorate fatigue. thus, in this study, we aimed at evaluating the effect of these factors on fatigue severity of ms patients. methods: in this cross-sectional study, 162 patients with ...

psoriasis is an autoimmune and recurrent chronic inflammatory skin disease. about 1-3% of the world wide populations are affected. the characteristic features are hyperprolifration of keratinocytes leading to redness, thickening and scaling of epidermis followed with itching and appearance of the lesions which in most cases bother the patients medically and psychologically. psoriasis is symptom...

results we performed rush on 77 patients. kappa index was 0.71 (p value = 0.000), reflecting acceptable general agreement between initial impression and final diagnosis. for hypovolemic, cardiogenic and obstructive shock, the protocol had an npv above 97% yet it had a lower ppv. for shock with distributive or mixed etiology, rush showed a ppv of 100% but it had low sensitivity. subgroup analysi...