Swiss medical weekly
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Swiss medical weekly · Jan 2012
Randomized Controlled TrialEffect of bispectral index monitoring on extubation time and analgesic consumption in abdominal surgery: a randomised clinical trial.
The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of bispectral index (BIS) monitoring on intra-operative anaesthesia consumption and extubation time. ⋯ Guiding anaesthesia according to BIS level will result in significantly faster recovery after anaesthesia. The investigation was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01470898).
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Swiss medical weekly · Jan 2012
Diagnostic errors and flaws in clinical reasoning: mechanisms and prevention in practice.
Diagnostic errors account for more than 8% of adverse events in medicine and up to 30% of malpractice claims. Mechanisms of errors may be related to the working environment but cognitive issues are involved in about 75% of the cases, either alone or in association with system failures. The majority of cognitive errors are not related to knowledge deficiency but to flaws in data collection, data integration, and data verification that may lead to premature diagnostic closure. ⋯ It reviews the strategies described to prevent cognitive diagnostic errors. Many approaches propose awareness and reflective practice during daily activities, but the improvement of the quality of training at the pre-graduate, postgraduate and continuous levels, by using evidence-based education, should also be considered. Several conditions must be fulfilled to increase the understanding, the prevention, and the correction of diagnostic errors related to clinical reasoning: physicians must be willing to understand their own reasoning and decision processes; training efforts should be provided during the whole continuum of a clinician's career; and the involvement of medical schools, teaching hospitals, and medical societies in medical education research should be increased to improve evidence about error prevention.
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Swiss medical weekly · Jan 2012
Meta AnalysisMortality after hydroxyethyl starch 130/0.4 infusion: an updated meta-analysis of randomized trials.
Hydroxyethyl starch (HES) is in widespread clinical use for volume therapy with colloids. According to the most recent meta-analysis performed in 2010, published studies are of poor quality and report too few events to reliably estimate the benefits or risks of administering 6% HES 130/0.4. As results from new trials, reporting on a large number of events became available in 2011 and 2012, an updated meta-analysis was performed. ⋯ Large-scale trials should help more precisely to determine the effect of HES 130/0.4 on mortality. In the interim, best current evidence suggests a trend toward higher mortality among HES 130/0.4 recipients.
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Swiss medical weekly · Jan 2012
Multicenter Study Comparative StudyNurse-reported patient safety climate in Swiss hospitals: a descriptive-explorative substudy of the Swiss RN4CAST study.
Measuring the patient safety climate in the organisation of healthcare can help to identify problematic issues with a view to improving patient safety. We aimed (1) to describe the nurse-reported engagement in safety behaviours, (2) to describe the prevailing nurse-reported patient safety climate of general medical, surgical and mixed medical-surgical units in Swiss acute-care hospitals and (3) to explore differences between hospital type, unit type and language regions. ⋯ The findings of this study suggest a need to improve the patient safety climate on many units in Swiss hospitals. Leaders in hospitals should strengthen the patient safety climate at unit level by implementing methods, such as root cause analysis or patient safety leadership walk rounds, to improve individual and team skills and redesign work processes. The impact of these efforts should be measured by periodically assessing the patient safety climate with the SOS.
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Swiss medical weekly · Jan 2012
ReviewNeglected tropical diseases: diagnosis, clinical management, treatment and control.
Branded in 2005, "neglected tropical diseases" have gained traction in terms of advocacy, interest for research, enhanced funding and political will for their control and eventual elimination. Starting with an initial set of 13 neglected tropical diseases--seven helminth, three bacterial and three protozoal infections--the list considerably expanded to more than 40 diseases that now also includes viral, fungal and ectoparasitic infections. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the neglected tropical diseases, their causative agents and the current geographical distribution, including their importance for the general practitioners seeing returning travellers and migrants in Switzerland. ⋯ With an emphasis on neglected tropical diseases due to helminths, protozoa and ectoparasites, we review common diagnostic methods and current recommendations for treatment at the population level and the individual patient, thereby juxtaposing the situation in highly endemic countries on one side, with Switzerland on the other. We highlight the clinical presentation and management of the neglected tropical diseases in general and then elaborate on two examples, strongyloidiasis and leptospirosis. Our review provides a global perspective of neglected tropical diseases and we hope that it will prove useful for the general practitioner and clinician in Switzerland and elsewhere to enhance their suspicion index, differential diagnosis, clinical management and treatment, including referral to specialised clinics and laboratories when need be.