Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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You are responsible for a large medical surgical ICU. Your hospital administration has been very focused on reducing rates of hospital-acquired infections particularly in the wake of increasing public attention. ⋯ Your hospital administration wants your direction on next year's expenditures. You are debating whether the expense is worthwhile and advise your hospital administration accordingly.
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Information on complication rates is essential to trauma quality improvement efforts. However, it is unclear which complications are the most clinically relevant. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether there is consensus on the complications that should be used to evaluate the performance of acute care trauma hospitals. ⋯ Based on the results of this review, we can make a weak recommendation on three complications that should be used to evaluate acute care trauma hospitals; pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, and pneumonia. However, considering the observed disparity in definitions, the lack of clinical justification for the complications used, and the low methodological quality of studies, further research is needed to develop a valid and reliable performance indicator based on complications that can be used to improve the quality and efficiency of trauma care.
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This systematic review is focused on the in-hospital mortality and neurological outcome of survivors after prehospital resuscitation following trauma. Data were analyzed for adults/pediatric patients and for blunt/penetrating trauma. ⋯ Children have a higher chance of survival after resuscitation of an out-of-hospital traumatic cardiac arrest compared to adults but tend to have a poorer neurological outcome at discharge.