Evidence for the use of peri- and post-operative antibiotic prophylaxis in autologous breast reconstruction: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Autologous breast reconstruction has become standard of care, but there is no consensus on prophylactic antibiotic regimens for this surgical procedure. This review aims to present evidence on the best prophylactic antibiotic protocol to lower the risk of surgical site infections in autologous breast reconstructions. METHODS: The search was performed in PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library on 25th of January 2022. Data on the number of surgical site infections, breast reconstruction type (pedicled or free flap) and reconstruction timing (immediate or delayed), as well as data on the type, dose, route of administration, timing, and duration of antibiotic treatment were extracted. All included articles were additionally assessed for potential risk of bias by using the revised RTI Item Bank tool. RESULTS: 12 studies were included in this review. No evidence is found that giving post-operative antibiotics for a prolonged period longer than 24 h after surgery is useful in lowering infection rates. This review could not distinguish between the best choice of antimicrobial agent. DISCUSSION: Although this is the first study that collected current evidence on this topic, the quality of evidence is limited due to a small number of available studies (N = 12) with small study populations. The included studies have high heterogeneity, no adjustment for confounding, and interchangeably used definitions. Future research is highly recommended with predefined definitions, and a sufficient number of included patients. CONCLUSION: Antibiotic prophylaxis up to a maximum of 24 h is useful in lowering infection rates in autologous breast reconstructions.

Causes for Medical Errors in Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Background: Quality strategies, interventions, and frameworks have been developed to facilitate a better understanding of healthcare systems. Reporting adverse events is one of these strategies. Gynaecology and obstetrics are one of the specialties with many adverse events. To understand the main causes of medical errors in gynaecology and obstetrics and how they could be prevented, we conducted this systematic review. Methods: This systematic review was performed in compliance with the Prisma 2020 guidelines. We searched several databases for relevant studies (Jan 2010-May 2023). Studies were included if they indicated the presence of any potential risk factor at the hospital level for medical errors or adverse events in gynaecology or obstetrics. Results: We included 26 articles in the quantitative analysis of this review. Most of these (n = 12) are cross-sectional studies; eight are case-control studies, and six are cohort studies. One of the most frequently reported contributing factors is delay in healthcare. In addition, the availability of products and trained staff, team training, and communication are often reported to contribute to near-misses/maternal deaths. Conclusions: All risk factors that were found in our review imply several categories of contributing factors regarding: (1) delay of care, (2) coordination and management of care, and (3) scarcity of supply, personnel, and knowledge.

COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study with an opportunity-centric approach from an ICU perspective in a teaching hospital. Upsides worth to secure?

OBJECTIVES: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the staff in the intensive care unit (ICU) was materially, physically and emotionally challenged. This qualitative study investigated the effects that ICU staff experienced and were considered of value to be permanently implemented. SETTING: ICU in an university medical centre during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. DESIGN: An opportunity-centric approach was applied in individual semi-structured interviews to optimise the achieved results and was guided by the theoretical model of appreciative inquiry (AI). PARTICIPANTS: Fifteen ICU staff members (8 nurses and 7 intensivists) participated. RESULTS: Working during the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed interprofessional collaboration and team learning in the ICU on an individual and team level, centred around a common goal: taking care of critically ill patients with COVID-19. The effect of interprofessional collaboration was that provisions were taken care of quicker than usual, without bureaucratic delays. However, this effect was experienced to be transient. Also, ICU staff perceived limited possibilities to help patients and families around the palliative phase, and they perceived a lack of appreciation from higher management. This is a point of future attention: how to make this perceived lack of appreciation more visible to all (ICU) staff. CONCLUSION: Regarding our primary question, the ICU staff voiced that the direct communication and collaboration are the most important elements of the COVID-19 peak they would like to preserve. Furthermore, it was learnt that consolation and support for family members should not be forgotten. Considering the results, we believe that further research concerning team reflexivity might contribute to (or enhance) our knowledge about working together during and after a crisis.

Prevalence, pathophysiology, prediction and health-related quality of life of long COVID: study protocol of the longitudinal multiple cohort CORona Follow Up (CORFU) study.

INTRODUCTION: The variety, time patterns and long-term prognosis of persistent COVID-19 symptoms (long COVID-19) in patients who suffered from mild to severe acute COVID-19 are incompletely understood. Cohort studies will be combined to describe the prevalence of long COVID-19 symptoms, and to explore the pathophysiological mechanisms and impact on health-related quality of life. A prediction model for long COVID-19 will be developed and internally validated to guide care in future patients. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Data from seven COVID-19 cohorts will be aggregated in the longitudinal multiple cohort CORona Follow Up (CORFU) study. CORFU includes Dutch patients who suffered from COVID-19 at home, were hospitalised without or with intensive care unit treatment, needed inpatient or outpatient rehabilitation and controls who did not suffer from COVID-19. Individual cohort study designs were aligned and follow-up has been synchronised. Cohort participants will be followed up for a maximum of 24 months after acute infection. Next to the clinical characteristics measured in individual cohorts, the CORFU questionnaire on long COVID-19 outcomes and determinants will be administered digitally at 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months after the infection. The primary outcome is the prevalence of long COVID-19 symptoms up to 2 years after acute infection. Secondary outcomes are health-related quality of life (eg, EQ-5D), physical functioning, and the prevalence of thromboembolic complications, respiratory complications, cardiovascular diseases and endothelial dysfunction. A prediction model and a patient platform prototype will be developed. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Approval was obtained from the medical research ethics committee of Maastricht University Medical Center+ and Maastricht University (METC 2021-2990) and local committees of the participating cohorts. The project is supported by ZonMW and EuroQol Research Foundation. Results will be published in open access peer-reviewed scientific journals and presented at (inter)national conferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05240742.

A Systematic Review of Methods for Medical Record Analysis to Detect Adverse Events in Hospitalized Patients.

OBJECTIVE: In this systematic review, we evaluate 2 of the most used trigger tools according to the criteria of the World Health Organization for evaluating methods. METHODS: We searched Embase, PubMed, and Cochrane databases for studies (2000-2017). Studies were included if medical record review (MRR) was performed with either the Global Trigger Tool or the Harvard Medical Practice Study in a hospital population. Quality assessment was performed in duplicate. Fifty studies were included, and results were reported for every criterion separately. RESULTS: Medical record review reveals more adverse events (AEs) than any other method. However, at the same time, it detects different AEs. The costs of an AE were on average €4296. Considerable efforts have been made worldwide in health care to improve safety and to reduce errors. These have resulted in some positive effects. The literature showed that MRR is focused on several domains of quality of care and seems suitable for both small and large cohorts. Furthermore, we found a moderate to substantial agreement for the presence of a trigger and a moderate to good agreement for the presence of an AE. CONCLUSIONS: Medical record review with a trigger tool is a reasonably well-researched method for the evaluation of the medical records for AEs. However, looking at the World Health Organization criteria, much research is still lacking or of moderate quality. Especially for the cost of detecting AEs, valuable information is missing. Moreover, knowledge of how MRR changes quality and safety of care should be evaluated.

Limited external reproducibility restricts the use of medical record review for benchmarking.

Background: Medical record review (MRR) is used to assess the quality and safety in hospitals. It is increasingly used to compare institutions. Therefore, the external reproducibility should be high. In the current study, we evaluated this external reproducibility for the assessment of an adverse event (AE) in a sample of records from two university medical centres in the Netherlands, using the same review method. Methods: From both hospitals, 40 medical records were randomly chosen from patient files of deceased patients that had been evaluated in the preceding years by the internal review committees. After reviewing by the external committees, we assessed the overall and kappa agreement by comparing the results of both review rounds (once by the own internal committee and once by the external committee). This was calculated for the presence of an AE, preventability and contribution to death. Results: Kappa for the presence of AEs was moderate (k=0.47). For preventability, the agreement was fair (k=0.39) and poor for contribution to death (k=-0.109). Conclusion: We still believe that MRR is suitable for the detection of general issues concerning patient safety. However, based on the outcomes of this study, we would advise to be careful when using MRR for benchmarking.

The Harvard medical practice study trigger system performance in deceased patients.

BACKGROUND: To detect possible threats to quality and safety, multiple systems have been developed. One of them is retrospective chart review. A team of experts scrutinizes medical records, selected by trigger systems, to detect possible adverse events (AEs). The most important AEs and more hints for possible improvement of care appear in deceased patients. Using triggers in a sample of these patients might increase the performance and lower the burden of scrutinizing records without possible preventable AEs. The aim of this study was therefore to determine the performance of the trigger system in a sample of deceased patients and to calculate the specificity and the sensitivity of this trigger system for predicting AEs. METHODS: We performed a study in which the records of deceased patients were screened for triggers by a team of trained nurses. A sample of 100 medical records was randomly selected out of records which had been screened between 2012 and 2015 for the first time, prior to the study in 2016. For the determination of significant differences between the first and second screening, McNemar's test of symmetry was used. Also, observed agreement, Cohen's Kappa and prevalence-adjusted and-bias-adjusted-kappa (PABAK) statistics were calculated. This was done for the two trigger rounds on both any trigger present and for every trigger separately. RESULTS: The observed agreement for any given trigger was 75% with a Kappa and PABAK of 0.5. For the individual triggers, the observed agreement was on average 90%. The corresponding Kappa was on average 0.42 (range: - 0.03-0.78) and the average PABAK was 0.8 (range: 0.44-0.92). Two adverse events were found in cases without triggers previously. The recalculated specificity and sensitivity for the original population were 58 and 92% respectively. CONCLUSIONS: For the reproducibility of triggers it seems that some perform better than others, but on average this is to our opinion suboptimal. The low specificity implies that many records are selected without AEs. This leads to a high false-positive rate making this labour-intensive record review process costly. Therefore, research for better and more expedient systems is required.

Adverse event detection by medical record review is reproducible, but the assessment of their preventability is not.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the reproducibility of adverse event evaluation by a medical record review committee. DESIGN: Cross-sectional reanalysis of medical records. INTERVENTION: Reviewers re-examined fifty medical records of deceased patients regarding the presence of adverse events, their potential preventability and their possible contribution to death. Also we investigated the root causes of the preventable AEs. Differences between the first and second assessment were calculated. RESULTS: The Kappa on the presence of an adverse event was 0.64 and 0.32 for the potential preventability. The intrarater agreement showed a Kappa of 0.61 on the adverse event presence and 0.64 for the potential preventability. Interrater agreement showed a Kappa of 0.66 for the adverse event presence and 0.03 for the potential preventability. CONCLUSION: We found a fair reproducibility for the detection of adverse events, but a poor reproducibility for the potential preventability. Possibly this was caused by lack of a definition for the preventability of adverse events. We think giving feedback to professionals using the results of medical record review remains valuable, but an improvement of its reproducibility is essential. To our opinion an international consensus on what exactly constitutes preventability of adverse events and agreement on a definition is necessary. This would result in more comparable studies in this field and could then be more informative on the ideal procedure to avoid certain potentially preventable adverse events in the future.

The ability of triggers to retrospectively predict potentially preventable adverse events in a sample of deceased patients.

Several trigger systems have been developed to screen medical records of hospitalized patients for adverse events (AEs). Because it's too labor-intensive to screen the records of all patients, usually a sample is screened. Our sample consists of patients who died during their stay because chances of finding preventable AEs in this subset are highest. Records were reviewed for fifteen triggers (n = 2182). When a trigger was present, the records were scrutinized by specialized medical doctors who searched for AEs. The positive predictive value (PPV) of the total trigger system and of the individual triggers was calculated. Additional analyses were performed to identify a possible optimization of the trigger system. In our sample, the trigger system had an overall PPV for AEs of 47%, 17% for potentially preventable AEs. More triggers present in a record increased the probability of detecting an AE. Adjustments to the trigger system slightly increased the positive predictive value but missed about 10% of the AEs detected with the original system. In our sample of deceased patients the trigger system has a PPV comparable to other samples. However still, an enormous amount of time and resources are spent on cases without AEs or with non-preventable AEs. Possibly, the performance could be further improved by combining triggers with clinical scores and laboratory results. This could be promising in reducing the costly and labor-intensive work of screening medical records.