Annals of surgery
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The purpose of this study was to describe the natural history, identify risk factors, and determine outcomes for the development of postoperative delirium in the elderly. ⋯ In the current study, delirium occurred in 44% of elderly patients after a major operation. Pre-existing cognitive dysfunction was the strongest predictor of the development of postoperative delirium. Outcomes, including an increased rate of 6 month mortality, were worse in patients who developed postoperative delirium.
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To quantify the prevalence, outcomes, and cost of surgical resident research. ⋯ Interrupting residency to perform a research fellowship is a common and costly practice among general surgery residents. Although performing a research fellowship is associated with clinical fellowship training after residency, it is unclear to what extent this practice leads to the development of surgical investigators after postgraduate training.
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To determine whether imputed data can be used to produce unbiased hospital quality measures. ⋯ Multiple imputation can be used to impute missing data and yields hospital quality measures that are nearly identical to those based on the true data. Simply excluding patients with missing data or excluding risk factors with missing data from hospital quality assessment yields substantially inferior quality measures.