Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging disease with a rapid increase in cases and deaths since its first discovery in December 2019, in Wuhan, China. Limited data on COVID-19 during pregnancy are available; however, information on diseases associated with other highly pathogenic coronaviruses (i.e., severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)...

The purpose of this study was to identify which variables are the best predictors of a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) classification and develop a model to predict the nursing care required by DNR patients in the ICU. Data collected on DNR and non-DNR patients included nursing care requirements, severity of illness, resource allocation and sociodemographic characteristics. One model identified the be...

The Clinical Global Impressions Scale (CGI) was modified specifically for use in assessing global illness severity and change in patients with bipolar disorder. Criticisms of the original CGI were addressed by correcting inconsistencies in scaling, identifying time frames for comparison, clarifying definitions of illness severity and change, and separating out assessment of treatment side effec...

OBJECTIVE People with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar illness share clinical symptoms, biological findings, and genetic susceptibility. Diminished suppression of the P50 auditory evoked potential is a phenotype used in studies of genetic susceptibility in schizophrenia. In patients with acute mania, this inhibitory deficit has been correlated with severity of clinical sympt...

OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship among subjective illness impact, subjective well-being, and psoriasis severity as assessed by dermatologists. Furthermore, subjective well-being of psoriasis patients was compared to available norm data. METHODS Fifty-nine psoriasis patients participated in this study. The following measures were administered: (a) the Pict...

Psychological stress is a risk factor as well as a consequence of central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC). Impulsiveness, overachievement, emotional instability, and hard-driving competitiveness have been discussed as personality features in CSC patients. We investigated 57 consecutive CSC patients and 57 age- and gender-matched controls by means of the Symptom Checklist 90-R and the Temperament...

The new Medicare Prospective Payment System has been challenged with regard to its fairness in reimbursing hospitals adequately, given the true resource needs in caring for patients. Most of these criticisms are now labelled as issues about adjustments for severity of illness. Critics point to the large amount of unexplained variation in charges and length of stay within the existing DRG's as i...

Objective: To review the physiology of lactate production and metabolism, the causes of lactic acidosis, and the current applications of lactate monitoring in humans and animals. Data sources: Human and veterinary studies. Summary: Lactate production is the result of anaerobic metabolism. Tissue hypoxia due to hypoperfusion is the most common cause of lactic acidosis. Studies in critically ill ...

We compared 223 consecutive intensive care unit (ICU) admissions to a community hospital (CH) with 613 such admissions at a university hospital (UH) using a new clinical scale aimed at quantifying severity of illness. Both ICU's had similar technical resources and treatment capabilities. At the CH, however, patients were more often admitted for monitoring rather than for treatment of UH admissi...