STUDY OBJECTIVES We hypothesized that continuous, automatic turning utilizing a patient-friendly, low air loss surface would reduce the incidence of early ICU pneumonia in selected groups of critically ill medical patients. DESIGN Prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trial. SETTING Medical ICU of a large community teaching hospital. PATIENTS One hundred twenty-four critically ill ...

PURPOSE Previous studies have examined the effects of hospitalists in urban academic hospitals. We compared the outcomes of patients treated by hospitalists with those of patients treated by internists at a 647-bed rural community hospital. SUBJECTS AND METHODS The 443 patients in the hospitalists' 10 most common diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) were compared with 1,681 patients in the same DR...

Background At present, the diagnosis-related groups-based prospective payment system (DRG-PPS) that has been implemented in China is merely a prototype called the simplified DRG-PPS, which is known as the 'ceiling price for a single disease'. Given that studies on the effects of a simplified DRG-PPS in China have usually been controversial, we aim to synthesize evidence examining whether DRGs c...

UNLABELLED Pig has been used recently as an animal model for studying diseases of human urinary tract, however, the sensory innervations of urinary bladder in this species has not been yet described. OBJECTIVE The present study was aimed at neurochemical characterization of sensory neurons of dorsal root ganglia (DRGs) supplying porcine urinary bladder. METHODS Retrograde tracer Fast Blue (...

We present Spitzer 24μm imaging of 1.5 < z < 2.5 Distant Red Galaxies (DRGs) in the 10×10 Extended Hubble Deep Field South of the Multiwavelength Survey by Yale-Chile. We detect 65% of the DRGs with KAB < 23.2 mag at S24μm & 40μJy, and conclude that the bulk of the DRG population are dusty active galaxies. A mid-infrared (MIR) color analysis with IRAC data suggests that the MIR fluxes are not d...

BACKGROUND In this study we examined the influence of type of insurance and the influence of managed care in particular, on the length of stay decisions physicians make and on variation in medical practice. METHODS We studied lengths of stay for comparable patients who are insured under managed or non-managed care plans. Seven Diagnosis Related Groups were chosen, two medical (COPD and CHF), ...

This study was conducted to evaluate the ability of AN-DRG version 3.1 to predict variation in patients' length of stay in hospital (LOS) and identify other factors that can influence the LOS by using routinely collected hospital morbidity data. A total of 18 DRGs that comprised 4,589 episodes were analysed. Multiple regression was used to model length of stay as a function of a number of indep...

Abstract Background Postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is a devastating complication after varicella-zoster virus infection. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has been shown to participate in the pathogenesis of PHN. A truncated isoform tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB) TrkB.T1, as high-affinity BDNF, upregulated multiple nervous system injuries, and such upregulation associated with pain. ...

In 2000, Germany selected the Australian DRG system as a base for a national standard German version (now called German DRGs, or simply G-DRGs). No serious consideration has been given thus far to major changes in the classification, because there are many practical issues that must be addressed within a short time-scale, given the German federal government’s requirement that per case payment b...