Background: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) of the inferior vena cava (IVC) can help to noninvasively predict the effectiveness of treatment for volume-sensitive conditions, such as acute heart failure and shock. Recently POCUS-IVC has also been used to iteratively tailor fluid treatment to patient-specific targets. In real-world clinical settings, such iterative assessments are necessarily obtained by multiple [...]

Background: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) of the inferior vena cava (IVC) can help to noninvasively predict the effectiveness of treatment for volume-sensitive conditions, such as acute heart failure and shock. Recently POCUS-IVC has also been used to iteratively tailor fluid treatment to patient-specific targets. In real-world clinical settings, such iterative assessments are necessarily obtained by multiple [...]

Background: Discharge to post-acute care settings (PACs), such as skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), requires significant, complex discharge planning which often needs to be started early during hospitalization to be complete by time of discharge. This study sought to identify and model factors which predict a given patient’s likelihood of requiring PAC after discharge, using routinely [...]

Background: Acute heart failure (AHF) hospitalization is about one million hospital admissions per year and has tripled in the last 30 years in the United States. These illustrate the importance of recognizing early signs of AHF. Therefore, risk stratification can aid physicians in selecting appropriate evidence-based medical therapies. Red blood cell distribution width (RDW) is [...]

Background: Depending on the criterion applied, the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria and the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) criteria initially identify distinct populations that present to the emergency department (ED) with suspected sepsis (Prasad et al., SHM 2018). Our work has shown that 52% of patients meet SIRS criteria first and 48% meet [...]

Background: It is well-known that development of acute kidney injury (AKI) in hospitalized patients is associated with adverse outcomes. However, estimates of adverse outcomes in these patients has not been well-characterized. Reliable and accurate estimates are essential to understand the impact of AKI and for resource utilization. The objective of this study is to examine [...]

Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) in hospitalized patients is linked to adverse outcomes. Presence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in these patients has been shown to be an independent risk factor. Outcomes of patients with AKI on CKD have not been well-examined. This study is a retrospective analysis of outcomes in hospitalized patients with AKI [...]

Background: Up to 17% of all strokes occur in patients hospitalized for another diagnosis or procedure, and in-hospital strokes complicate up to 0.06% of all admissions. In-hospital strokes carry higher mortality, longer length of stay and greater disability than community-onset strokes. Multiple factors contribute to the worse outcomes of in-hospital stroke. Prompt recognition and treatment [...]

Case Presentation: A 12 year-old girl with a history of asthma and migraine headaches presented to the ED with a one week history of headaches and bloody tears. She first developed headache and left eye pain and pruritis one week prior, followed by blurry vision and bloody discharge from the left eye. She presented to [...]

Case Presentation: A 25-year-old woman with a remote history of intravenous drug use, last reported seven months prior, presented with two days of progressive cyanosis and pain of the medial right hand with associated paresthesia, hyperesthesia, and stiffness. Physical exam revealed well-demarcated cyanosis of the fourth, fifth, and medial third digits extending to the wrist [...]