Internal medicine journal
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Internal medicine journal · May 2021
Therapeutic drug monitoring in inflammatory bowel disease reduces unnecessary use of infliximab with substantial associated cost-savings.
Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of infliximab (IFX) levels in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients can help to guide dose adjustments or changes to therapy for selected patients in remission or with secondary loss of response (LOR). ⋯ Use of both reactive and proactive IFX TDM is cost-effective for IBD management as it informs the clinician where unnecessary use of IFX can be stopped.
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Internal medicine journal · May 2021
Health Status and Health Care Trends of Individuals Accessing Australian Aged Care Programs Over a Decade: The Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) Historical Cohort.
Understanding the health profile, service and medicine use of Australians in the aged care sector will help inform appropriate service provision for our ageing population. ⋯ The health of older Australians accessing aged care programmes has declined while frailty increased, with an increasing use of medicine and worse long-term mortality in some. Funding and care models need to adapt to this changing profile.
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Internal medicine journal · May 2021
Observational StudyLaboratory-derived early warning score for the prediction of in-hospital mortality, intensive care unit admission, medical emergency team activation and cardiac arrest in general medical wards.
General medical wards admit a varied cohort of patients from the emergency department, some of whom deteriorate during their hospital stay. Currently, we use vital signs based warning scores to predict patients at risk of imminent deterioration, but there is now a growing body of literature that commonly available laboratory results may also help to identify those at risk. ⋯ A simple laboratory-derived score obtained at patient admission is a fair to good predictor of subsequent in-patient death or cardiac arrest in general medical patients and in the older patient cohort. Prospective interventional studies are required to ascertain the clinical utility of this admission score.