Irish journal of medical science
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Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Beaumont Hospital is a nationally designated symptomatic breast cancer unit, independent of the national screening programme, BreastCheck. ⋯ Patients attending the symptomatic breast cancer unit Beaumont Hospital have different demographics compared with the national registry data. This presents particular challenges for management.
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Significant T wave inversion in young asymptomatic athletes is rare but poses a significant clinical challenge. Pre-participation sports screening programs identify such subjects. Clinical concern that such ECG changes represent an occult cardiomyopathy or forme fruste hypertrophic cardiomyopathy leads to diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma. We sought to genotype a cohort of such subjects with a normal cardiac phenotype identified in our unit over a 3-year period. ⋯ The absence of mutations in target genes and heterogeneous sequence variations identified in this study suggest that inferolateral T wave inversion in athletes without a phenotype may potentially represent a benign repolarization syndrome related to athletic adaptation. This was the first study to assess a phenotype-genotype correlation in this population. Further genetic studies need to be undertaken in this area.
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The goal of the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland (CAI) is to train qualified anaesthesiologists who embody all aspects of professionalism. The Medical Council of Ireland has identified Eight Domains of Good Professional Practice which guide the standards for postgraduate specialist training, including within the CAI. ⋯ We advocate and make recommendations for more effective incorporation of the non-technical domains of professional practice in the processes of curriculum development, teaching, learning, feedback and assessment.
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Judicious spending in healthcare is of paramount importance, particularly when introducing new devices or interventions. These products or interventions need to be economically efficient both directly and indirectly. An accepted method of cost estimation is micro-costing. Micro-costing involves direct enumeration and costing of every input consumed in the treatment of a particular patient when using new device, medicine or intervention. In our study, we investigated the cost of using a novel sublingual (SL) patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) device and compared it with our conventional intravenous (IV) PCA device. ⋯ After performance of a micro-costing study, the less costly IV PCA episode was statistically significant compared with a SL PCA episode. However, the associated staff costs were less with a SL PCA episode. We performed a micro-costing study on a novel sublingual PCA device and compared it with a conventional intravenous PCA device. All resources were included and compared.
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The aim of this study was to evaluate intradialytic hypotension (IDH) prevalence, influencing factors, and nursing interventions in hemodialysis (HD) patients. ⋯ Nursing staff awareness regarding the frequency of IDH in hemodialysis patients and the related symptoms needs to be increased.