Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Editorial Volume 18 Issue 4 – Decision-making in acute medicine

Editorials, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Acute physicians make patient-centred decisions at the start of the patient’s hospital journey. Dozens more decisions are made by the individual members of the MDT (and, of course, by the patient) during the in-patient period. Decisions are made at every level of seniority and experience and range widely in scope and impact. The original articles in this issue are connected by a common thread: phenomena that inform and influence the decisions made by acute physicians.

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Which patients should be monitored, how should they be monitored, and why should they be monitored?

Guest Editorial, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Intensively monitoring severely ill patients is like placing a smoke alarm in a burning building: it makes no sense. Smoke alarms only makes sense if they are placed in buildings before a fire starts, or after a fire has been extinguished in order to make sure it does not start again. Therefore, logic suggests that it is more important to monitor sick patients with normal vital signs in order to detect any deterioration as early as possible, or AFTER a severe illness in order to ensure they do not relapse, and it is safe for them to be discharged from hospital and return home.

Which patients should be monitored, how should they be monitored, and why should they be monitored? Read More

Identifying avoidable switchboard delays in England’s NHS hospitals: phase one of the national SWITCH project

Original Articles, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Background: Inter-hospital communication frequently requires mediation via a switchboard. Identifying and eliminating switchboard inefficiencies may improve patient care.

Methods: All 175 acute hospital switchboards in England were contacted six times. Call contents and duration were recorded. No clinician calls or bleeps were connected.

Results: The mean delay before contacting a switchboard operative was 55±46 seconds. 115 hospitals (66%) used automated switchboards; 34 of these (30%) had infection control messages. Robot operators introduced an additional 40 second delay versus humans (mean 70.3±28 versus 29.8±23 seconds, p<0.0001). Multivariate analysis identified robot operators (HR 5.1, p<0.0001) and infection control messages (HR 2.9, p=0.003) as predictors of delays over 60 seconds. Conclusions: There are significant avoidable delays in contacting switchboard operatives across England. Quality improvement is underway.

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Using trends in electronic recordings of vital signs to identify patients stable for transfer from acute hospitals

Original Articles, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Patients who are stable might not be required to remain in hospital. We aimed to create objective criteria to indicate stability based on vital signs. An index based on NEWS (NBI) was compared to a Patient Stability Index (PSI) algorithm created by random forest analysis.

Data from the VITAL II study was used to train the algorithm and data from the VITAL III study to validate it. Failure rate of the algorithms was set close to the rate of readmission to UK hospitals at 15%. After a training period of two days the NBI identified stability with acceptable failure rates only after a further 96 hours with a subsequent release of 2143 bed days compared to the PSI which identified stability after only 12 hours leading to potential earlier release of 2652 bed days.

Vital sign-based algorithms might be able to predict safe transfer from hospital and inform management of flow.

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Described Practices for Assessing Fluid Resuscitation in Acute Hospital Care: A Qualitative Study

Original Articles, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Fluid resuscitation is a widely-used treatment in acute and emergency medicine, however, the process used to perform a fluid assessment has never been studied. This qualitative study explored how acute physicians describe their approach to assessing for fluid resuscitation. 18 clinicians of varying grades consented to a semi-structured interview. Transcripts were coded and analysed using thematic analysis. Participants described three subtypes of assessment; screening assessment, emergency assessment and formal assessment. Whether a patient was ‘sick’ was key to determining which assessment they would receive. Marked heterogeneity was noted in the assessment processes, particularly regarding the use of history-taking. Further research is required to determine how the information gathered in these assessments is used to decide when fluid resuscitation is indicated.

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Higher In-Hospital Mortality in Patients with Nonspecific Complaints Presenting to the Emergency Department

Original Articles, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Background: Nonspecific complaints (NSC) at the Emergency Department (ED) are not well researched yet.

Objective: To investigate the number of patients who could be classified as having NSC early after arrival in the ED using an algorithm.

Method: Retrospective cohort study was conducted among all hemodynamically stable non-trauma adult patients with MTS category orange/yellow visiting the ED. Patients who had no specific complaints/signs, predefined on a list, were categorized as NSC.

Results: In total, 2419 patients, of whom 102 (4.2%) presented with NSC. Hospitalization was more prevalent (85.3% vs. 69.0%, p<0.001) and in-hospital mortality was higher in the NSC-group (11.8% vs. 3.5%, adjusted OR 2.0, 95% CI 1.0-3.9, p=0.04). Conclusion: Using an algorithm it is possible to identify NSC patients who have (worse) outcomes than those classified as SC.

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The Use of Lung Ultrasound in Acute Medicine

Original Articles, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

POCUS (Point of Care Ultrasound) refers to ultrasound performed by clinicians as part of their initial patient evaluation, often with the aim of answering a specific question as opposed to being a comprehensive assessment. Such ultrasound is noninvasive, involves no radiation and can be rapidly performed at the bedside. It is also widely practiced in emergency and intensive care medicine leading to earlier and more accurate diagnoses for a wide range of presentations such as shock, renal failure and dyspnoea. POCUS has evolved from cardiological or radiological studies, reduced in complexity and scoped for clinician use. Lung ultrasound (LUS) has been largely developed by acute care clinicians and is a more recent addition to POCUS. Procedural LUS is widely recommended to improve the safety profile of pleural catheter placement (referring to BTS guidelines) but in the UK diagnostic LUS is not widely practiced despite good evidence and guideline support for its use. In this article we briefly review and describe the role of diagnostic LUS as applied to acute medicine. Potential advantages of LUS include a decreased time to diagnosis, improved diagnostic accuracy, a reduction in radiation exposure and unnecessary expensive tests. Studies have shown that at least one diagnosis was missed in around a fifth of patients with acute respiratory symptoms, resulting in increased length of stay and mortality in a third of patients.

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MR-Brain Causing Confusion

Picture Quiz, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

An 82-year-old lady was found on the floor of her home, confused and surrounded by vomitus. She had a past medical history of type II diabetes, hypothyroidism, previous left total hip replacement, and previous hip fracture treated with right dynamic screw fixation. Prior to the current presentation she had been living alone, mobilizing independently with a walking stick and self-caring for her activities of daily living. She was last seen by her daughter on the previous day, and reported no concerning symptoms.

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Purple Urine Bag Syndrome in a Patient with an Ileal Conduit and Clostridium Difficile Infection

Case Reports, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Purple urine bag syndrome is a potentially alarming phenomenon caused by bacterial metabolism of urinary tryptophan into indigo (blue) and indirubin (red) pigments. We report the case of a 46-year-old female with an ileal conduit who presented with a 2 week history of abdominal pain and purple discolouration of her urine. In addition, we review the literature on purple urine bag syndrome, and identify potential new risk factors and management considerations.

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Non traumatic spinal epidural haematoma

Case Reports, Volume 18, Issue 4, Pages 205 – 264 (2019)

Spinal epidural haematoma is a rare condition, which may be due to trauma, surgery, epidural catheterisation or disorders of coagulation. We report a case of 60 year old lady who was on warfarin for Atrial fibrillation (AF) presented with history of non-traumatic sudden onset pain in both legs and difficulty in walking. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) spine demonstrated epidural haematoma which was treated conservatively. Another dilemma was anticoagulation for AF. We examine the options to manage such case.

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