The Medical journal of Australia
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To investigate use of interventions to minimise need for perioperative transfusion of allogeneic blood in surgical units in Australia. ⋯ Interventions to minimise the need for perioperative allogeneic blood transfusion (apart from drugs) are widely used in Australia. However, enthusiasm for intraoperative techniques of re-infusing autologous blood needs to be assessed against the evidence of their efficacy and cost-effectiveness.
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Differences in the health of individuals reflect inherent features of the societies in which they live. The way a society organizes itself and delivers wellbeing to its members are major determinants of health. ⋯ Psychosocial factors, such as a sense of isolation, deprivation or loss of control, are also important. Governments can reduce health inequalities by ensuring that all policies are assessed for their potential impact on the health of all sectors of society.
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Meta Analysis
Automatic external defibrillators: changing the way we manage ventricular fibrillation.
To discuss recent developments in automatic defibrillation and to review the evidence that first-responders equipped with automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) improve survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. ⋯ Meta-analysis suggests that equipping first-responders with AEDs increases the probability of survival to hospital discharge after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (odds ratio, 1.74; 95% CI, 1.27-2.38; P < 0.001). However, most of the studies lacked sufficient power to draw definitive conclusions. Until the impact of wide deployment of AEDs is fully understood, first-responder defibrillation in Australia should only occur as part of coordinated multicentre research studies.