International journal of clinical practice
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Hospital readmissions are associated with poor patient outcomes and increased health resource utilisation. The need to study readmission patterns is even bigger during a pandemic because the burden is further stretching the healthcare system. ⋯ Among hospitalised patients with COVID-19, those readmitted had a higher burden of comorbidities than the non-readmitted. Within the first 12 days from discharge, readmission reasons were more likely to be associated with COVID-19, while those happening later were related to other reasons. Readmissions characterisation may help in defining optimal timing for patient discharge and ensuring safe care transition.
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Int. J. Clin. Pract. · Mar 2021
"Stay at Home, Protect the National Health Service, Save Lives": a cost benefit analysis of the lockdown in the United Kingdom.
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed lives across the world. In the UK, a public health driven policy of population "lockdown" has had enormous personal and economic impact. ⋯ This suggests that the costs of continuing severe restrictions are so great relative to likely benefits in lives saved that a rapid easing in restrictions is now warranted.
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Int. J. Clin. Pract. · Mar 2021
Effects of smoking cessation on sexual functions and health quality of life in premenopausal women: A prospective case - controlled study.
To evaluate whether smoking cessation has an effect on female sexual function and quality of life. ⋯ In this study, it was shown that smoking negatively affected FSD and QOL when compared with healthy non-smoking women, and smoking cessation caused significant improvements in FSFI and SF-36 scores in these women after 9 months.
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Int. J. Clin. Pract. · Mar 2021
Case ReportsEvaluation of antibiotic use among hospitalized patients in a pediatric department of a training hospital in Turkey.
Antibiotics are widely used and inaccurate or inappropriate prescription of antibiotics causes a significant increase in the prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections among children. This research aimed to study antibiotic prescriptions in hospitalised paediatric patients and to determine the prevalence of inappropriate antimicrobial use and the main types of prescribing errors. ⋯ The results of our study show that a high level of antibiotics in the paediatric clinic was misprescribed. Inappropriate usage increases the chances of microbial resistance and the cost of treatment. Precautions should be taken in this regard.
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Int. J. Clin. Pract. · Mar 2021
Utility of the FebriDx point-of-care test for rapid triage and identification of possible coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is straining healthcare resources. Molecular testing turnaround time precludes having results at the point-of-care (POC) thereby exposing COVID-19/Non-COVID-19 patients while awaiting diagnosis. We evaluated the utility of a triage strategy including FebriDx, a 10-minute POC finger-stick blood test that differentiates viral from bacterial acute respiratory infection through detection of Myxovirus-resistance protein A (MxA) and C-reactive protein (CRP), to rapidly isolate viral cases requiring confirmatory testing. ⋯ FebriDx could be deployed as part of a reliable triage strategy for identifying symptomatic cases as possible COVID-19 in the pandemic.