BMJ open
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This systematic review out of Berkeley investigated data on death, injury and disability resulting from crowd control projectiles:
- Rubber and plastic bullets
- Beanbag rounds
- Shot pellets
- Baton rounds
The researchers looked at published data from a 27 year period in the US, UK/N Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Switzerland, Turkey, Kashmir and Nepal.
The study was part of a larger effort from Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations.
What did they find?
Analysing 26 articles (mainly cohort studies) including 1,984 injured people, they identified 53 (3%) deaths and 300 (15%) permanently disabled. Half of total deaths and 83% of disabilities were due to head or neck strikes.
More than half (56%) of the deaths were from penetrative injuries, and 27% from chest or abdominal trauma.
The majority of permanent disability was vision loss, or abdominal injuries resulting in splenectomy or colostomy.
71% of survived injuries were severe, mostly to skin or extremities.
"Given their inherent inaccuracy, potential for misuse and associated health consequences of severe injury, disability and death, KIPs do not appear to be appropriate weapons for use in crowd-control settings."
Take-home
Although colloquially called 'non-lethal weapons', it would be more accurate to label kinetic impact projectiles (KIPs) as less-lethal weapons given the high risk of severe injury, permanent disability or even death.
"We identified only two basic contexts in which CCWs should be used in crowd-control settings:
- Arrest of individuals engaged in unlawful behaviour, such as throwing rocks and;
- Crowd dispersal in riot situations that threaten public safety."
Compounding issue...
Several articles highlighted the effect on morbidity of delays in accessing medical care due to police action and civil unrest.
"There is an urgent need to establish international guidelines on the use of CCWs to prevent unnecessary injury, disability and death, particularly in the use of operational models that avoid the use of weapons."
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Endotracheal intubation in intensive care unit (ICU) is a procedure at high risk of life-threatening complications. Among them, severe oxygen desaturation, usually defined as a drop of pulse oxymetry (SpO2) below 80%, is the most common. Preoxygenation enables delaying oxygen desaturation occurring during apnea induced by anaesthetic drugs. Data suggest that non-invasive ventilation (NIV) or high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) oxygen therapy could further increase PaO2 before intubation procedure and prevent oxygen desaturation episodes as compared with standard oxygen. However, no recommendation favours one technique rather than the other, since they have never been compared. Hence, whether a strategy of preoxygenation with NIV or HFNC is more effective than the other in patients with acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure remains to be established. ⋯ The study has been approved by the central ethics committee (Ethics Committee Ouest-III, Poitiers, France) and patients will be included after informed consent. The results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
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Patients with relapsed or refractory malignancies have a poor prognosis. Immunotherapy with chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells redirects a patient's immune cells against the tumour antigen. CAR-T cell therapy has demonstrated promise in treating patients with several haematological malignancies, including acute B-cell lymphoblastic leukaemia and B-cell lymphomas. CAR-T cell therapy for patients with other solid tumours is also being tested. Safety is an important consideration in CAR-T cell therapy given the potential for serious adverse events, including death. Previous reviews on CAR-T cell therapy have been limited in scope and methodology. Herein, we present a protocol for a systematic review to identify CAR-T cell interventional studies and examine the safety and efficacy of this therapy in patients with haematology malignancies and solid tumours. ⋯ CRD42017075331.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Study protocol for statin web-based investigation of side effects (StatinWISE): a series of randomised controlled N-of-1 trials comparing atorvastatin and placebo in UK primary care.
Statins are effective at preventing cardiovascular disease, widely prescribed and their use is growing. Uncertainty persists about whether they cause symptomatic muscle adverse effects, such as pain and weakness, in the absence of statin myopathy. Discrepancies between data from observational studies, which suggest statins are associated with excess muscle symptoms, and from randomised trials, which suggest no such excess, have caused confusion. N-of-1 trials offer the opportunity to establish whether muscle symptoms during statin use are caused by statins in particular individuals. ⋯ This trial received a favourable opinion from South Central-Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee. Results will be published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. Dissemination of results to patients will take place via the media, website (statinwise.lshtm.ac.uk) and patient organisations.
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There is an ongoing debate on the possible association between infections in early childhood and subsequent cancer risk, but it remains unclear if a hospital admission for infection is associated with risk of childhood cancer diagnosis. We examined if a hospital-based diagnosis of pneumonia was a clinical marker of the three most common childhood cancers. ⋯ The short-term incidence of leukaemia, lymphoma and brain cancer was higher than expected and persisted beyond 5 years for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and brain cancer. However, the absolute cancer risk was low.