Background: Risk stratifying patients for potential development of hospital-related venous thromboembolism (VTE) is an important aspect of inpatient safety and is recommended by current guidelines.  Many risk stratification tools are cumbersome and require significant time to complete.  Developments have been made to partially or fully automate risk stratification tools, however there are restrictions within the [...]

Background: Patients diagnosed in-hospital with acute venous thromboembolism (VTE) are at high risk for post-discharge complications and readmission similar to patients with chronic conditions. Patient navigation reduces post-discharge complications and readmissions in patients with chronic diseases, however its role in acute conditions is less clear. Similarly, the use of mobile technology to improve patient engagement [...]

Background: The HOSPITAL score is an internationally validated risk assessment to identify patients at risk of 30 day readmission for adults discharged from an inpatient medical department.1The HOSPITAL score is validated for all hospital admissions – acute and chronic. The purpose of this study was to assess the use of the HOSPITAL score to predict [...]

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common preventable condition in hospitalized medical patients. Chemoprophylaxis with heparin or fondaparinux has been recommended for all hospitalized patients who are not at low risk, and appropriate thromboprophylaxis is a hospital quality measure. However, the specific threshold of VTE risk that warrants prophylaxis has not been defined. We used [...]

Case Presentation: An 80 year-old man presented with one day of confusion, worsened cough, and subjective fevers. He had a productive cough since emigrating from Mexico six months ago, but no complaints of dyspnea. He had a history of diabetes and stable angina for the past year. On presentation, he was tachycardic with a temperature [...]

Case Presentation: A 43 year-old man with history of alcohol abuse presented with progressive shortness of breath. He was found with severe pneumonia and subsequently developed cardiac arrest. Initial EKG suggested anteroseptal infarct, age undetermined; troponin was elevated with a peak of 0.188 ng/mL (normal <0.031 ng/mL). A left heart catheterization (LHC) revealed non-obstructive coronary [...]

Case Presentation: A 65-year-old female, Spanish speaking, Jehovah’s Witness, with a past medical history of insulin-dependent diabetes, PUD 2/2 H pylori treated but not tested for cure, and osteoarthritis who presents with hematemesis of one-day duration and abdominal pain of 5 days duration.The patient woke up vomiting blood on the morning of admission. While the [...]

Case Presentation: A 62-year-old woman with a medical history significant for seizure disorder presented with a right tibia fracture following a mechanical fall. She underwent open reduction and internal fixation of the right tibia and was extubated without difficulty following surgery. The following day, she became febrile and hypoxemic, requiring an escalating amount of oxygen [...]

Case Presentation: Hypercoagulable disorders pose an increased lifetime risk of developing venous thromboembolic events (VTE). It is established that patients with these disorders usually need lifelong anticoagulation once they have more than one thromboembolic event. With the emergence of novel oral anticoagulants (NOAC), management of these patients has been streamlined. However, in times of medical [...]

Case Presentation: A 68-year-old man with a history of atrial flutter and recurrent gastrointestinal (GI) bleeds (GIBs) with no clear etiology identified presented for planned direct current synchronized cardioversion.  Patient had failed multiple rate and rhythm control regimens as well as radiofrequency ablations.  He was placed on unfractionated heparin prior to cardioversion but developed recurrent [...]