full aseptic technique including gown and gloves might be regarded as best practice. It is common practice also to give additional antibiotics and a povodine-iodine washout although we could identify no studies other than uncontrolled cohort studies in support of this. TD. Infectious complications and cost-effectiveness of open resuscitation in the surgical intensive care unit after cardiac sur...

Acute stroke care in hospitals is best performed in organized stroke units, which are the essential part of the chain of recovery and form the backbone of prehospital, in-hospital, and posthospital care, that is, from home back to home. There is convincing evidence from a large number of randomized controlled trials that the outcomes of stroke and transient isch-emic attack (TIA) patients manag...

The Toronto Western Hospital is an academic hospital in Toronto, Canada, with an annual Emergency Department (ED) volume of 64,000 patients. Despite increases in patient volumes of almost six percent per annum over the last decade, there have been no commensurate increases in resources, infrastructure, and staffing. This has led to substantial increase in patient wait times, most specifically f...

We evaluated the initial and final diagnosis of 80 patients with delirium arriving at the emergence unit of a university hospital in a large Brazilian city over a period of 30 months up to December 1991. The diagnosis was based on the DSM-IIIR criteria. Patients with a known history of head trauma or epileptic seizure and patients younger than 13 years were excluded. Only patients with a diseas...

0377-2217/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2008.10.025 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +965 601 2051. E-mail addresses: [email protected] kuc01.kuniv.edu.kw (T.M. Alkhamis). This paper integrates simulation with optimization to design a decision support tool for the operation of an emergency department unit at a governmental hospital in Kuwait. The hospital provi...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence and clinical characteristics of non-traumatic chest pain, to assess the quality of treatment provided by an emergency department chest pain unit (CPU), and to provide a theoretical estimate of the size of future CPUs. METHODS This prospective study included 1000 consecutive patients with chest pain seen at a CPU and a second group compri...

Approximately 90% of patients with familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) complain of recurrent attacks of fever and abdominal pain of various severities. Prior to the diagnosis of FMF, the majority of patients are admitted to emergency units with a suspicion of acute abdomen pain and at least half of them undergo unnecessary abdominal interventions. The purpose of this study is to determine the fr...

introduction botulism is an acute form of poisoning resulted from ingestion of clostridium botulinum toxin. case presentation here we present five cases of food-borne botulism poisoning from home produced cheese. five patients from one family referred to our emergency unit with complaints of weakness and two had severe symptoms. in spite of the laboratory negative results antitoxin was administ...

Reducing the time delay in initiating thrombolytic therapy in acute myocardial infarction is critical in maximising the functional and survival benefit. We analysed 120 consecutive admissions for thrombolytic therapy to the Coronary Care Unit. The total delay was divided into prehospital, in-hospital and Coronary Care Unit stages, and the median delays were found to be 130, 70, and 15 minutes, ...