Children with medical complexity are a subset of patients with special health care needs whose "health and quality of life depend on integrating health care between a primary care medical home, tertiary care services, and other important loci of care such as transitional care facilities, rehabilitation units, the home, the school, and other community based settings," according to Cohen et al. T...

Introduction. Smoking is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally and it is a significant modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and other chronic diseases. Efforts to encourage and support smokers to quit are critical to prevent premature smoking-associated morbidity and mortality. Hospital settings are seldom equipped to help patients to quit smoking thus missing o...

Hyperglycemia has been associated with increased morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. Insulin has traditionally been the drug of choice for managing hyperglycemia in this setting, but carries a significant risk of hypoglycemia. Incretin-based therapies, including glucagon-like peptide-1, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, have potential...

BACKGROUND Over the past 15 years, many large university hospitals have reported their experience with percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy (PDT). The purposes of this study are to evaluate the safety of PDT in a non-university hospital setting and to compare our results with those published in the literature. METHODS The study was done by retrospective chart review. RESULTS Over a 6-year...

Tuberculosis (TB) is an ancient disease, but not a disease of the past. After disappearing from the world public health agenda in the 1960s and 1970s, TB returned in the early 1990s for several reasons, including the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the increase in drug resistance. More than 100 years after the discovery of the tubercle bacillus by Robert Koch, what is the status of TB co...

BACKGROUND Stapled hemorrhoidectomy was introduced as a new procedure for the surgical management of hemorrhoidal disease in 1993. We present a cohort longitudinal study performed in a community hospital setting where the short-term outcomes of stapled hemorrhoidectomy were compared with those of conventional hemorrhoidectomy. METHODS We compared 41 consecutive patients who underwent a conven...

This paper is a report on the results of a usability study where Augmented Reality (AR) was used for giving instructions on how to start up a diathermy apparatus (DA). The main question in focus was if the AR system would be accepted as part of the technological support by a user group consisting of professional medical personnel. It was found that all users but one could solve the task at hand...

Background Electrocardiogram (ECG) based telemedicine is a cornerstone in pre-hospital triage of patients with suspected ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). An ECG transmitted from the ambulance is reviewed by a cardiologist on-call in case of ongoing or recent chest pain, resuscitation from cardiac arrest, acute dyspnea of unknown origin and other suspicion of STEMI. We hypothesize tha...

Despite aggressive treatment, outcome of patients with glioblastoma is poor. Several distinct clinical problems arise in the terminal stage of this disease. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the end-of-life phase in a hospital setting in patients with glioblastoma. Twenty-nine consecutive patients with glioblastoma, who died in our department, were included in this analysis regarding sy...