The authors, propose that also a sudden death during pregnancy that remains unexplained after an in-depth autopsy, should be considered as a syndrome and referred with the acronym “SIUDS”, e.g., “Sudden Intrauterine Unexplained Death Syndrome”, like “SIDS” for “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome”. This suggested definition is based on the presence in these pathologies of common developmental abnormal...

BACKGROUND The analysis of autopsy reports plays an important role in the evaluation of trauma care quality. The objective of this study was to determine the rate of preventable deaths and medical errors in regard to the autopsy reports as an indicator of trauma care quality in traumatic deaths. METHODS A retrospective review of traumatic autopsy reports kept between 2011 and 2012 in Eskişehi...

Purpose. To evaluate the portion of hospitalized patients dying without prior intensive care unit (ICU) admission and assess whether death could have been prevented by intensive care. Methods. In this prospective, observational, multicenter study, data of adults dying in and outside the ICU in 5 tertiary and 14 secondary hospitals were collected during six months. A group of experts categorized...

Background: Potential years of life lost (PYLL) rate describes the number of years lost due to preventable premature death in a population. This is equal to the loss of human capital. Cause-specific PYLL-rates provide information for public health policy. Methods: PYLL-rate is calculated as an absolute difference between the age at death and the assumed length of life. Causes of preventable dea...

OBJECTIVE Adverse drug events (ADEs) can cause serious harm to patients and can lead to hospitalization or even death. ADEs are a burden not only to patients and their relatives, but also to society and have the potential to involve high costs. To provide more information on the economic burden of preventable adverse drug events of outpatients, we performed a cost study on the data collected in...

OBJECTIVES To conduct a descriptive epidemiological analysis of external cause deaths (premature, usually injury-related, and potentially preventable) of nursing home residents in Australia. DESIGN Retrospective study of a cohort of nursing home residents, using coronial data routinely recorded by the National Coronial Information System. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Residents of accredited Aus...

BACKGROUND The goal of this study was to determine the relationship between all-cause, risk-adjusted, in-hospital mortality after coronary artery bypass graft surgery and the proportion of preventable in-hospital deaths as a measure of quality of care at an institution level. METHODS AND RESULTS We conducted a retrospective analysis of 347 randomly selected in-hospital deaths after isolated c...

Introduction Monitoring hospital mortality using retrospective case record review (RCRR) is being adopted throughout the National Health Service (NHS) in England with publication of estimates of avoidable mortality beginning in 2017. We describe our experience of reviewing the care records of inpatients who died following admission to hospital in four acute hospital NHS Foundation Trusts in the...