Internal and emergency medicine
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Multicenter Study
Clinical outcome of long-term home parenteral nutrition in non-oncological patients: a report from two specialised centres.
Forty-one (20 m, 21 f) non-oncological home parenteral nutrition (HPN) patients (52.0+/-16.6 years, BMI 20.2+/-4.0 kg/m(2)), enrolled from 1995 to 2005, underwent a clinical and biochemical follow-up at 3 months, 1 and 3 years. ⋯ The experience of the nutritional team and careful patient and caregiver training reduce CVC infection rate and the overall risk of complications possibly due to HPN.
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Pulmonary embolism is a common disease associated with a high mortality rate. Death due to pulmonary embolism occurs more commonly in undiagnosed patients before hospital admission or during the initial in-hospital stay. Thus, mortality could be reduced by prompt diagnosis, early prognostic stratification and more intensive treatment in patients with adverse prognosis. ⋯ Despite the currently available evidence, no definite prognostic value can be assigned to any of the individual risk factors or cluster of them. Large prospective trials should be carried out to validate individual risk factors or clusters of risk factors able to identify patients with acute pulmonary embolism at high risk for in-hospital mortality. These patients could afford the trade-off of an increased risk of side effects related to a more aggressive treatment, such as thrombolysis or surgical or interventional procedures.