Internal medicine journal
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Internal medicine journal · Nov 2024
Are our patients becoming more complex? Trends in comorbidity and functional dependence in General Medicine 2011-2019.
Anecdotally, patients don't seem to be more unwell than they were 10 years ago, yet they still seem more 'complex'. ⋯ Despite a stable level of comorbidity, our finding of a decreasing BS score may suggest that patients are becoming more dependent. This increase in dependency rather than a change in chronic disease burden may be the cause of apparent increasing patient complexity.
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Internal medicine journal · Nov 2024
Injecting drug use is a risk factor for methicillin resistance in patients with Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections.
We investigated whether injecting drug use was a risk factor for methicillin resistance among inpatients with Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections (SABSIs) at an Australian health service. In 273 inpatients, 46 (16.9%) of SABSIs were methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). MRSA was more frequent in those who had injected drugs in the past 6 months (20.6%) compared with other inpatients (15.7%). Injecting drug use was associated with a 4.82-fold (95% confidence interval = 1.54-16.29) increased odds of MRSA after accounting for confounders.