Disparities in Mortality of Hispanic Patients with Cystic Fibrosis in the United States. A National and Regional Cohort Study.

RATIONALE: Patients of Hispanic origin with cystic fibrosis (CF) are the largest growing minority, representing 8.5% of patients with CF in the United States. No national survival analysis of this group has ever been undertaken. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to determine whether Hispanic ethnicity within the CF population is associated with worse outcomes and whether any geographic differences exist. METHODS: Using U.S. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry data from 2010 to 2014, we performed a retrospective cohort analysis comparing survival rates between Hispanics and non-Hispanics using Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analysis. A subject's residence was categorized into geographic regions based on U.S. Census Bureau data: Northeast, Midwest, West, and South. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: A total of 29,637 patients were included in the study; 2,493 identified themselves as Hispanic. Hispanics had a lower survival probability overall, with a mean age of death of 22.4 ± 9.9 years compared with non-Hispanics of 28.1 ± 10.0 years (P < 0.0001). Multivariate Cox proportional hazards modeling revealed that Hispanic patients with CF had a 1.27 times higher rate of death compared with non-Hispanics (95% confidence interval, 1.05-1.53) after adjusting for covariates including age, sex, genetic mutations, bacterial cultures, lung function, body mass index, use of CF respiratory therapies, low socioeconomic status, pancreatic enzyme use, and CF-related diabetes. When analyzed by region, Hispanics in the Midwest, Northeast, and West had shorter median survivals compared with non-Hispanics, which was not demonstrated in the South. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with CF of Hispanic origin have a higher mortality rate than non-Hispanic patients with CF. This pattern was seen in the Midwest, Northeast, and West but not in the South.

Multitasking simulation: Present application and future directions.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education lists multi-tasking as a core competency in several medical specialties due to increasing demands on providers to manage the care of multiple patients simultaneously. Trainees often learn multitasking on the job without any formal curriculum, leading to high error rates. Multitasking simulation training has demonstrated success in reducing error rates among trainees. Studies of multitasking simulation demonstrate that this type of simulation is feasible, does not hinder the acquisition of procedural skill, and leads to better performance during subsequent periods of multitasking. Although some healthcare agencies have discouraged multitasking due to higher error rates among multitasking providers, it cannot be eliminated entirely in settings such as the emergency department in which providers care for more than one patient simultaneously. Simulation can help trainees to identify situations in which multitasking is inappropriate, while preparing them for situations in which multitasking is inevitable.

Can a resident's publication record predict fellowship publications?

BACKGROUND: Internal medicine fellowship programs have an incentive to select fellows who will ultimately publish. Whether an applicant's publication record predicts long term publishing remains unknown. METHODS: Using records of fellowship bound internal medicine residents, we analyzed whether publications at time of fellowship application predict publications more than 3 years (2 years into fellowship) and up to 7 years after fellowship match. We calculate the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values and likelihood ratios for every cutoff number of application publications, and plot a receiver operator characteristic curve of this test. RESULTS: Of 307 fellowship bound residents, 126 (41%) published at least one article 3 to 7 years after matching, and 181 (59%) of residents do not publish in this time period. The area under the receiver operator characteristic curve is 0.59. No cutoff value for application publications possessed adequate test characteristics. CONCLUSION: The number of publications an applicant has at time of fellowship application is a poor predictor of who publishes in the long term. These findings do not validate the practice of using application publications as a tool for selecting fellows.

A clinical trial comparing physician prompting with an unprompted automated electronic checklist to reduce empirical antibiotic utilization.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether face-to-face prompting of critical care physicians reduces empirical antibiotic utilization compared to an unprompted electronic checklist embedded within the electronic health record. DESIGN: Random allocation design. SETTING: Medical ICU with high-intensity intensivist coverage at a tertiary care urban medical center. PATIENTS: Two hundred ninety-six critically ill patients treated with at least 1 day of empirical antibiotics. INTERVENTIONS: For one medical ICU team, face-to-face prompting of critical care physicians if they did not address empirical antibiotic utilization during a patient's daily rounds. On a separate medical ICU team, attendings and fellows were trained once to complete an electronic health record-embedded checklist daily for each patient, including a question asking whether listed empirical antibiotics could be discontinued. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Prompting led to a more than four-fold increase in discontinuing or narrowing of empirical antibiotics compared to use of the electronic checklist. Prompted group patients had a lower proportion of patient-days on which empirical antibiotics were administered compared to electronic checklist group patients (63.1% vs 70.0%, p = 0.002). Mean proportion of antibiotic-days on which empirical antibiotics were used was also lower in the prompted group, although not statistically significant (0.78 [0.27] vs 0.83 [0.27], p = 0.093). Each additional day of empirical antibiotics predicted higher risk-adjusted mortality (odds ratio, 1.14; 95% CI, 1.05-1.23). Risk-adjusted ICU length of stay and hospital mortality were not significantly different between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Face-to-face prompting was superior to an unprompted electronic health record-based checklist at reducing empirical antibiotic utilization. Sustained culture change may have contributed to the electronic checklist having similar empirical antibiotic utilization to a prompted group in the same medical ICU 2 years prior. Future studies should investigate the integration of an automated prompting mechanism with a more generalizable electronic health record-based checklist.

A decade of reversal: an analysis of 146 contradicted medical practices.

OBJECTIVE: To identify medical practices that offer no net benefits. METHODS: We reviewed all original articles published in 10 years (2001-2010) in one high-impact journal. Articles were classified on the basis of whether they addressed a medical practice, whether they tested a new or existing therapy, and whether results were positive or negative. Articles were then classified as 1 of 4 types: replacement, when a new practice surpasses standard of care; back to the drawing board, when a new practice is no better than current practice; reaffirmation, when an existing practice is found to be better than a lesser standard; and reversal, when an existing practice is found to be no better than a lesser therapy. This study was conducted from August 1, 2011, through October 31, 2012. RESULTS: We reviewed 2044 original articles, 1344 of which concerned a medical practice. Of these, 981 articles (73.0%) examined a new medical practice, whereas 363 (27.0%) tested an established practice. A total of 947 studies (70.5%) had positive findings, whereas 397 (29.5%) reached a negative conclusion. A total of 756 articles addressing a medical practice constituted replacement, 165 were back to the drawing board, 146 were medical reversals, 138 were reaffirmations, and 139 were inconclusive. Of the 363 articles testing standard of care, 146 (40.2%) reversed that practice, whereas 138 (38.0%) reaffirmed it. CONCLUSION: The reversal of established medical practice is common and occurs across all classes of medical practice. This investigation sheds light on low-value practices and patterns of medical research.

The diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary embolism: a metaphor for medicine in the evidence-based medicine era.

BACKGROUND: The history of pulmonary embolism (PE) provides a fascinating portrait of a well-established diagnosis and standard of care treatment moving into the age of evidence-based medicine. METHODS: We examined the history of PE and the practice of treating PE with anticoagulation. RESULTS: Pulmonary embolism is a diagnostic category whose definition and treatment have both changed in the past century. Initially, PE was recognizable only when massive, with the signs and symptoms of right heart failure. Anticoagulants were established as the cornerstone of PE management with a single randomized controlled trial of 35 patients in 1960 and based on commonsense pathophysiologic reasoning. Since then, the diagnostic category of PE has been broadened, and the advent of computed tomography pulmonary angiography has yielded nearly a doubling of the incidence of the disease, without a concordant decrease in mortality. Although anticoagulation remains the cornerstone of management, open questions remain: what end points are altered by anticoagulation? What is the number needed to treat? CONCLUSIONS: Trials of newer anticoagulants and longer durations of anticoagulation have not yielded real improvements over heparin, inviting doubts regarding its efficacy. Thus, PE is the quintessential diagnosis of medicine not because it represents our greatest success, but because it captures all the complexity of medicine in the evidence-based era. It may serve as a metaphor for many other conditions in medicine, including coronary artery disease. New trials in the field continue to test trivialities, whereas fundamental questions are unanswered.

Multisite analysis of 177 consecutive primary breast augmentations: predictors for reoperation.

BACKGROUND: Plastic surgeons and manufacturers of breast implants have been examining the complication and reoperation rates of primary breast augmentations for more than 18 years. The seemingly high rates reported by the manufacturers to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were the impetus for this multicenter study. OBJECTIVE: This paper reports on data pooled from three plastic surgery practices that were geographically distributed across the United States and examines the reoperation rate, time to reoperation, the reason for reoperation, and specific complications in 177 consecutive primary breast augmentation patients. These data are statistically compared to the manufacturers' 2005 and 2008 FDA data. In addition, the significance of selected variables from our data are examined as predictors for reoperation. METHODS: Data were retrospectively collected from 177 consecutive primary breast augmentations performed between 2001 and 2004 from three surgical practices. Direct physician-to-patient follow-up periods ranged from 12 to 58 months, with 100% of patients having at least one year of follow-up. Each practice extracted chart data on variables and complications, including reoperations. These data were independently collated and sent to an independent biostatistician for analysis. RESULTS: Our three year Kaplan-Meier (KM) reoperation rate (8%) and capsular contracture rate (2%) were both lower than the manufacturers' KM 3-year rates for reoperation (13%-21%) and capsular contracture (8.2%-9%). Logistic regression identified only simultaneous mastopexy and preexisting ptosis as predictors of reoperation.