World journal of emergency medicine
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Patients backlogged in the emergency department (ED) waiting for an inpatient bed (boarders) continue to require the attention of ED physicians, exacerbating crowding in the ED. To address this problem, we added a "float shift" to our winter schedule solely to care for boarders. We sought to quantify the effect of this float shift, hypothesizing greater physician productivity. ⋯ The presence of a "float shift" physician caring only for boarding patients allows other physicians to maintain and even increase their productivity in our ED, despite the presence of longer throughput times and increased time on diversion.
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Current studies on CD62P have focused mainly on cardiovascular diseases, while only few studies have evaluated the effects of CD62P on the development of sepsis and the association between endothelial cell injury with inflammation and coagulation. This study attended to explore the association between endothelial cell injury with inflammation and coagulation by evaluating the expression of soluble CD62P (s-CD62P) in plasma and its mechanism in patients with sepsis, thus to provide the evidence of effective treatment of sepsis with anti-adhesion therapy targeted CD62P. ⋯ The concentration of plasma s-CD62P is elevated as a early biomarker in patients with sepsis, and it serves as one of the pathogenic factors responsible for endothelial cell damage. Coagulation and mediators of inflammation promote each other, aggravating the severity of sepsis. Plasma s-CD62P may be an important factor for the development of coagulation and inflammatory reaction.
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This study aimed to investigate the risk factors and outcome of critically ill cancer patients with postoperative acute respiratory insufficiency. ⋯ A history of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, surgery-related infection, hypovolemic shock and emergency surgery were risk factors of critically ill cancer patients with postoperative acute respiratory insufficiency. Septic shock was the only independent prognostic factor of intensive care unit death in patients with acute respiratory insufficiency. Compared with patients without acute respiratory insufficiency, those with acute respiratory insufficiency had adverse short-term outcome and a decreased one-year survival rate.
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This study was undertaken to validate the use of the modified early warning score (MEWS) as a predictor of patient mortality and intensive care unit (ICU)/ high dependency (HD) admission in an Asian population. ⋯ The composite MEWS did not perform well in predicting poor patient outcomes for critically ill patients presenting to an ED.
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A long length of stay (LOS) in the emergency department (ED) associated with overcrowding has been found to adversely affect the quality of ED care. The objective of this study is to determine whether patients who speak a language other than English at home have a longer LOS in EDs compared to those whose speak only English at home. ⋯ There is a close relationship between the language spoken at home and the LOS at EDs, indicating that language could be an important predictor of prolonged LOS in EDs and improving language services might reduce LOS and ease overcrowding in EDs in Queensland's public hospitals.