OBJECTIVE Estimate the Years of Life Lost (YLL) for overall and avoidable causes of death (CoD) in Colombia for the period 1998-2011. METHODS From the reported deaths to the Colombian mortality database during 1998-2011, we classified deaths from avoidable causes. With the reference life table of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 study, we estimated the overall YLL and YLL due to avoida...

Weaknesses in governance led to avoidable mistakes, says Chris Ham, as the UK death toll from covid-19 passes 100 000

OBJECTIVE Readmissions to hospital after discharge are considered adverse, serious and costly outcomes. In the last years, two new scores have been proposed to identify patients at high risk of hospital readmission, the HOSPITAL and the Elders Risk Assessment (ERA) indexes. The aim of this study was to evaluate these two scores and the risk of death among internal medicine readmitted patients. ...

Age standardized mortality rates (SMR) vary between 43 and 162 per 100,000 inhabitants from cervical cancer in different areas in England, between 19 and 250 from tuberculosis, between 31 and 249 for asthma, between 0 and 263 from rheumatic heart disease, from 0 to 379 for acute respiratory disease, from 18 to 279 for abdominal hernias, and from 0 to 228 for appendicitis. Essentially similar di...

OBJECTIVES To measure variations in the Holland and Charlton classifications of avoidable death causes and to estimate the effect of the Spanish national health system on avoidable mortality. DESIGN Mortality in the Valencian Community was assessed between 1975 and 1990. The classifications of Holland and Charlton, used to assess avoidable causes of death, were compared. Holland's classificat...

We reviewed 116 patients, known to have talked before dying after head injury, to discover factors which had contributed to death but which might have been avoided. All the patients were admitted to a neurosurgical unit and had a neuropathological post-mortem examination. One or more avoidable factors were identified in 86 patients (74%); an avoidable factor was judged certainly to have contrib...

Safety and error reduction in medical care is crucial to the future of medicine. This study evaluates trauma patients dying at a level 1 trauma centre to determine the adequacy of care. All trauma deaths at a level 1 trauma centre between 1996 and 2003 were reviewed by an eight-member multidisciplinary death review panel. Errors in care were classified according to their location, nature, impac...