OBJECTIVE To assess trends in 30-day emergency readmission rates across England over one decade. DESIGN Retrospective study design. SETTING 150 non-specialist hospital trusts in England. PARTICIPANTS 23 069 134 patients above 18 years of age who were readmitted following an initial admission (n=62 584 297) between April 2006 and February 2016. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOMES We examined ...

Any junior doctor navigating the early stages of training will recognise the need to develop the ability to crystallise the essence of a clinical case with a few succinct questions and directed examination, enabling subsequent investigations and treatments to be well directed. Whilst the acquisition of this experience requires hard yards on the shop floor, this book makes an excellent companion...

For three cohorts (the elderly, socially deprived, and those with chronic disabling disease), the relationship between the concentrations of particulate matter (PM10), sulphur dioxide (SO₂), or oxides of nitrogen (NOx) at the time of hospital admission and outcomes (30-day in-hospital mortality) were investigated All emergency admissions (90,423 episodes, recorded in 48,035 patients) between 20...

AIM To examine medical and sociodemographic factors involved in acute paediatric admission. To compare outcome of admission with factors present at time of admission. METHODS Prospective questionnaire based study of 887 consecutive emergency general paediatric admissions to five Yorkshire hospitals during two separate three week periods in summer and winter. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Discharge ...

BACKGROUND Although emergency care of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) could theoretically be improved through improved patient delay, this notion remains to be confirmed. Additionally, the influence of large earthquakes on the emergency care of AMI cases remains to be elucidated. The Great East Japan Earthquake (March 11, 2011) has enabled us to address these issues. METHODS AND RESULTS  We...

Background An overview of compulsory admission and civil commitment in Germany is presented. Legal, administrative, and methodological aspects are described. The expiry of compulsory admission or retention in a closed psychiatric ward is not strictly identical to legal commitment. In Germany, civil commitment (a form of guardianship) is regulated on a nationwide basis. Public commitment (throug...

This study tests whether the rate of inappropriate hospital admissions is high in areas with high medical admission rates. Seventy small geographic areas were formed by grouping Massachusetts ZIP codes by similarity of hospital use. Appropriateness of hospital admission was measured both by applying the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol and by applying physicians' judgment to the medical reco...

affects 300 million people worldwide and 5.4 million people in the UK of whom 80 per cent are adults.1 Despite advances in the diagnosis and management of asthma,2 surveys indicate that many patients have poorly controlled symptoms and experience frequent exacerbations.3,4 Three quarters of hospital admissions and nine out of 10 deaths from asthma are likely to be preventable.1,5 The financial ...

Work was carried out to determine whether patients requiring emergency medical or surgical admission to hospital via accident and emergency (A&E) departments benefit from initial assessment by the ward senior house officer (SHO) as well as the A&E SHO. Two comparable consultant-led A&E departments sharing the same catchment population and receiving similar numbers of new patients each year were...

INTRODUCTION The objective of the study was to assess home medication data collected at the Emergency Department in a tertiary hospital. It also aimed to identify whether any possible deficiencies in this collection were translated as reconciliation errors on admission, to analyse and classify these data and identify the pharmacological groups involved. METHOD A prospective observational stud...