Hospital Medicine News

Prospective audit and feedback is a staple intervention used by antimicrobial stewardship programs, or ASPs, to reduce antimicrobial use and improve patient outcomes. The intensity of the approach can vary.

WASHINGTON — Lower hemoglobin levels may be a strong and independent predictor of higher risk of major adverse kidney events within 7 days after cardiac surgery or admittance to the ICU, according to data presented at ASN Kidney Week.

A cohort of older veterans with obesity who underwent bariatric surgery experienced an initial drop in pharmacy-related costs when compared with matched adults who did not undergo surgery, but overall health care costs remained comparable between groups during 10 years of follow-up, according to findings published in JAMA Surgery.

NEW ORLEANS — Children with acute gastroenteritis with dehydration receive unequal treatment in the ED because of race, according to a retrospective analysis of more than 30,000 patients.

A series of interventions improved the rate of appropriate continuous renal replacement therapy dosing for patients hospitalized with acute kidney injury, according to a published study.

Despite the implementation of protocols to reduce opioid prescriptions during hospitalizations, approximately 90% of women who underwent cesarean delivery and did not use opioids in the hospital were discharged with an opioid prescription, according to findings from two related studies presented at Anesthesiology 2019.

A program that provided specific processes to support the initiation of PD in urgent and unplanned situations reduced both central venous catheter use through hemodialysis and length of hospital stay, according to a published study.

Despite guidelines recommending its use, pneumococcal urinary antigen testing, or UAT, is not performed often in the United States, even though it can help identify patients who are eligible for antibiotic de-escalation, researchers reported.

Among patients who received maintenance dialysis, those who had higher Charlson Comorbidity Index scores were more likely to have unplanned 30-day hospital readmissions than those with lower scores, according to a published study.

Medicare reimbursement policies that provide higher payments to hospitals than provider-based office settings for noninvasive cardiac tests lead to increases in testing and extra costs, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.