Background: Acute heart failure (AHF) is the major cause of hospital admission and death. Furthermore, patients admitted with AHF have high readmission rates and  postdischarge mortality. Although there have been some reports, which demonstrated the predictive factors of death among patients of acute heart failure in the USA and Europe, there has been no studies [...]

Background: The successful management of ABSSSI requires prompt assessment and appropriate antibiotic therapy. Antibiotic selection requires consideration of patient comorbidities to ensure appropriate pathogen coverage and to avoid contraindications related to comorbidities and concomitant medications. Two global phase 3 ABSSSI trials (study 302 and 303), comparing delafloxacin (DLX), an anionic fluoroquinolone, to vancomycin/aztreonam (VAN/AZ), provide [...]

Background:   Congestive heart failure (CHF) and pneumonia are amongst the leading causes of hospitalization in the United States.  Although a growing number of hospitals use both teaching and nonteaching hospitalist services for patient care, the differences in clinical outcomes and efficiency between these two services is not clearly known. The aim of this study [...]

Background: Evidence suggests that risk of central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) between patients with traditional central venous catheters (CVC) vs. peripherally inserted central catheters (PICC) is similar. However, how best to predict CLABSI in patients with PICCs is not known.  Methods: We used data from the Michigan Hospital Medicine Safety (HMS) Consortium, a 51-hospital Blue [...]

Background: Ultrasound-guidance has become the standard for bedside procedures in the Emergency and Inpatient setting due to its perceived impact on first success rate and reduced complications. However, literature data on the rate of complications is limited for inpatient populations using exclusive ultrasound guidance. Existing data often includes outpatients (ie stable cirrhotic patients) or did [...]

Background: Recent guidelines include aspirin as an option to prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE) in selected patients undergoing hip or knee replacement surgery. However, the efficacy of aspirin after arthroplasty has not been well-defined, particularly in more contemporary patient populations. Objective: To compare rates of post-operative VTE between patients who received aspirin-only versus anticoagulants after hip [...]

Background: The UCLA Department of Medicine (DOM) Rapid Mortality Review (RMR) is an innovative in-person, near real-time review of all deaths to capture the unique insight of the care providers into aspects of end-of-life care quality that otherwise go undocumented and unreported. The purpose of this study is to examine characteristics of mortality cases that [...]

Background: As of 2016, there are approximately 36.7 million people living with HIV around the world. HIV infection is associated with tremendous psychological burden. Improvements in coping methods would be highly beneficial in this scenario. Crucial to this would be a high Coping Self-Efficacy (CSE). Defined as a “belief about one’s ability to perform specific [...]

Background: In the United States, studies have reported mixed results on outcomes following out–of–hospital cardiac arrest. We postulated that such variation is not only dependent on the populations included or excluded in these studies but also on the setting from where the data is derived. Methods: We used the 1995 to 2013 Nationwide Inpatient Sample [...]

Background: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) started penalizing hospitals with “excess” 30-day readmissions, as determined by observed-to-expected ratio, for patients discharged after treatment for an acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD). An understanding of modifiable determinants of 30-day readmission will likely help in developing interventions to reduce preventable AECOPD readmissions. [...]