BACKGROUND Recent United Kingdom strategies focus on preventable suicide deaths in former psychiatric in-patients, but natural causes of death, accidents and homicide may also be important. This study was intended to find the relative importance of natural and unnatural causes of death in people discharged from long-term psychiatric care in Scotland in 1977-1994. METHODS People discharged ali...

Above all else, the raison d’être of perioperative nurse is to maintain surgical asepsis and patient safety. However, despite current efforts, there still an unacceptably high number our patients experiencing preventable adverse events. A recent systematic review found that 20 per cent are harmed during their hospital stay, with 50 these harms judged as wholly preventable1. This equates approxi...

BACKGROUND There is debate surrounding the effectiveness of the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV). We determined whether PPV was associated with reduced mortality or additional hospitalization for vaccine-preventable infections in patients previously hospitalized for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). METHODS From 2000 through 2002, adults with CAP admitted to the hospital ...

BACKGROUND Adverse events are considered a major international problem related to the performance of health systems. Evaluating the occurrence of adverse events involves, as any other outcome measure, determining the extent to which the observed differences can be attributed to the patient's risk factors or to variations in the treatment process, and this in turn highlights the importance of me...

Venous thromboembolism is a preventable cause of morbidity and death in hospitalized patients. In addition to administering correct and effective prophylaxis to the various treatment groups, therapy should be tailored to the individual based on the identification of baseline risk factors. No patient at significant risk for venous thrombosis should be left unprotected.

A detailed pathological and psychosocial study was made of all postperinatal (8 days-2 years) deaths in Sheffield during a 2-year period. The cause of death was classified from the point of view of possible prevention. Of the total of 65 deaths, 35 were unpreventable after the perinatal period, but 9 might have been preventable before birth. Of the 30 other deaths, 20 had evidence of possible t...

INTRODUCTION Hypertension is becoming an increasingly recognized health problem in children. The obesity epidemic has led to a greater frequency of hypertension diagnosis in children. In adults, hypertension is a leading cause of preventable death, heart attack, stroke, and kidney disease. For all patients, the goal of identifying and treating hypertension is to prevent end-organ damage and red...

Postperinatal mortality rates have shown two phases of decline since 1947 which are traditionally ascribed to social and medical improvements. These factors cannot, however, explain the arrest of decline during the 1960s. There appears to be a biological effect on child mortality rates, manifesting as a generation effect. This is due partly to continuing changes in the structure of the child po...

OBJECTIVE To calculate the preventable fraction of unintentional childhood injury deaths in the United States. DESIGN Ecological study of cause specific unintentional childhood injury mortality rates across the 50 states (and the District of Columbia) of the United States (US) over the 10 year period 1989-98. METHODS The internet accessible database from the National Center for Injury Preve...