Articles: cations.
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Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) has been performed on patients with cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) for over 40 years. ⋯ Advances in SRS procedures over the past 20 years have resulted in a lower risk of RIC, but fewer patients had AVM obliteration. Increasing the prescription dose for patients with medium- and large-volume AVMs by using current conformal dose-planning techniques may improve the obliteration rate while maintaining a low risk of RICs.
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Surgical infections · Apr 2016
Risk Adjustment for Determining Surgical Site Infection in Colon Surgery: Are All Models Created Equal?
Colon surgical site infections (SSIs) are being utilized increasingly as a quality measure for hospital reimbursement and public reporting. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) now require reporting of colon SSI, which is entered through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). However, the CMS's model for determining expected SSIs uses different risk adjustment variables than does NHSN. We hypothesize that CMS's colon SSI model will predict lower expected infection rates than will NHSN. ⋯ The CMS's current risk-adjustment model using age and ASA classification predicts lower rates of expected colon SSIs than does NHSN. This may lead to financial penalties because of the use of limited risk factors. Further efforts at elucidating appropriate risk adjustment measures without unnecessarily burdening hospitals with expensive data collection are necessary.
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Gamma Knife radiosurgery (GKRS) is commonly used in treating small vestibular schwannomas; however, its use for larger vestibular schwannomas is still controversial. ⋯ GKRS, Gamma Knife radiosurgeryVS, vestibular schwannoma.
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As most bariatric procedures are performed by laparoscopy, hospital stay is exceptionally short, despite the habitus of patients and the rather extensive intra-abdominal surgery. To facilitate postoperative mobilization, most patients are given repeated single doses of morphine, a drug with several side effects. We aimed to evaluate the effect of preoperative treatment with a tablet of slow-release morphine (SRM) on postoperative analgesic consumption and length of stay (LOS) in laparoscopic gastric bypass (LGBP). ⋯ Preoperatively administered slow-release morphine significantly reduced the need for postoperative analgesics and shortened hospital stay, without side effects or other complications. At our department, the studied regime is now routinely used in all bariatric surgery and we have started to use the concept in other groups of surgical patients.