Postoperative salt and water retention has been recognized for most of this century. Does it matter? Can or should it be avoided? These are still questions about which debate continues. Pringle, in 1905, observed reduced urine volumes and weight gain in postoperative patients [31]. Wilkinson studied 27 patients perioperatively and observed a decrease in urinary concentrations of sodium and chlo...

health reforms that emphasize public health and improvements in primary care can be cost-effective measures to achieve health improvements, especially in developing countries that face severe resource constraints. in their paper “shanghai rising: health improvements as measured by avoidable mortality since 2000,” gusmano et al suggest that shanghai’s health policy-makers have been successful in...

Objective To better characterize and understand the nature of a very conservative definition of 'avoidable' emergency department (ED) visits in the United States to provide policymakers insight into what interventions can target non-urgent ED visits. Design/setting We performed a retrospective analysis of a very conservative definition of 'avoidable' ED visits using data from the National Hos...

OBJECTIVE To identify the most common avoidable factors, missed opportunities and substandard care in perinatal care in South Africa. SETTING Seventy-three state hospitals throughout South Africa representing metropolitan areas, cities and towns, and rural areas. METHOD Users of the Perinatal Problem Identification Programme (PPIP) amalgamated their data to provide descriptive information o...

The prospect of a superbug that could wipe out much of the human race sounds like the stuff of science-fiction novels, Hollywood movies or doomsday prophets. However, such a global pandemic might not be as unlikely as it seems—some would even go so far as to say that it is a certainty, with the only uncertainties being what pathogen will cause it, when it will happen and how well the world will...