The Acute Kidney Outreach to Prevent Deterioration and Death trial: a large pilot study for a cluster-randomized trial.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The Acute Kidney Outreach to Reduce Deterioration and Death trial was a large pilot study for a cluster-randomized trial of acute kidney injury (AKI) outreach. METHODS: An observational control (before) phase was conducted in two teaching hospitals (9 miles apart) and their respective catchment areas. In the intervention (after) phase, a working-hours AKI outreach service operated for the intervention hospital/area for 20 weeks, with the other site acting as a control. All AKI alerts in both hospital and community patients were screened for inclusion. Major exclusion criteria were patients who were at the end of life, unlikely to benefit from outreach, lacking mental capacity or already referred to the renal team. The intervention arm included a model of escalation of renal care to AKI patients, depending on AKI stage. The 30-day primary outcome was a combination of death, or deterioration, as shown by any need for dialysis or progression in AKI stage. A total of 1762 adult patients were recruited; 744 at the intervention site during the after phase. RESULTS: A median of 3.0 non-medication recommendations and 0.5 medication-related recommendations per patient were made by the outreach team a median of 15.7 h after the AKI alert. Relatively low rates of the primary outcomes of death within 30 days (11-15%) or requirement for dialysis (0.4-3.7%) were seen across all four groups. In an exploratory analysis, at the intervention hospital during the after phase, there was an odds ratio for the combined primary outcome of 0.73 (95% confidence interval 0.42-1.26; P = 0.26). CONCLUSIONS: An AKI outreach service can provide standardized specialist care to those with AKI across a healthcare economy. Trials assessing AKI outreach may benefit from focusing on those patients with 'mid-range' prognosis, where nephrological intervention could have the most impact.

Inpatient care: should the general physician now take charge?

In an ageing population, patients are living longer with one or more chronic disease, and with acute illnesses increasingly extending outside the boundaries of a single medical specialty. Therefore, is it time for the general physician to take charge?

Two-epoch cross-sectional case record review protocol comparing quality of care of hospital emergency admissions at weekends versus weekdays.

INTRODUCTION: The mortality associated with weekend admission to hospital (the 'weekend effect') has for many years been attributed to deficiencies in quality of hospital care, often assumed to be due to suboptimal senior medical staffing at weekends. This protocol describes a case note review to determine whether there are differences in care quality for emergency admissions (EAs) to hospital at weekends compared with weekdays, and whether the difference has reduced over time as health policies have changed to promote 7-day services. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Cross-sectional two-epoch case record review of 20 acute hospital Trusts in England. Anonymised case records of 4000 EAs to hospital, 2000 at weekends and 2000 on weekdays, covering two epochs (financial years 2012-2013 and 2016-2017). Admissions will be randomly selected across the whole of each epoch from Trust electronic patient records. Following training, structured implicit case reviews will be conducted by consultants or senior registrars (senior residents) in acute medical specialities (60 case records per reviewer), and limited to the first 7 days following hospital admission. The co-primary outcomes are the weekend:weekday admission ratio of errors per case record, and a global assessment of care quality on a Likert scale. Error rates will be analysed using mixed effects logistic regression models, and care quality using ordinal regression methods. Secondary outcomes include error typology, error-related adverse events and any correlation between error rates and staffing. The data will also be used to inform a parallel health economics analysis. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The project has received ethics approval from the South West Wales Research Ethics Committee (REC): reference 13/WA/0372. Informed consent is not required for accessing anonymised patient case records from which patient identifiers had been removed. The findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications in high-quality journals and through local High-intensity Specialist-Led Acute Care (HiSLAC) leads at the 121 hospitals that make up the HiSLAC Collaborative.

Acute Kidney Outreach to Reduce Deterioration and Death (AKORDD) trial: the protocol for a large pilot study.

INTRODUCTION: Acute kidney injury (AKI) contributes to morbidity and mortality, and its care is often suboptimal and/or delayed. The Acute Kidney Outreach to Reduce Deterioration and Death (AKORDD) study is a large pilot testing provision of early specialist advice, to improve outcomes for patients with AKI. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This before and after study will test an Outreach service for adult patients with AKI, identified using the national algorithm. During the 2-month before phase, AKI outcomes (30-day mortality, need for dialysis or AKI stage deterioration) will be observed in the intervention and control hospitals and their respective community areas; no interventions will be delivered. Patients will receive good standard care. During the 5-month after phase, the intervention will be delivered to patients with AKI in the intervention hospital and its area. Patients with AKI in the control hospital and its area will continue to have good standard care only. Patients already on dialysis and at end of life will be excluded. The interventions will be initially delivered via a phone call, with or without a visit to the primary clinician, aiming at rapidly establishing the aetiology, correcting reversible causes and conducting further appropriate investigation. Surviving stage 3 patients will be followed-up in an AKI clinic. We will conduct qualitative research using focus group-based discussions with primary and secondary care clinicians during the early and late phases of the trial. This will help break down potential barriers and improve care delivery. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Patients will be contacted about the study allowing them to 'opt out'. The work of an Outreach team, guided by AKI alerts and delivering timely advice to clinicians, may improve outcomes. If the results suggest that benefits are delivered by an AKI Outreach team, this study will lead to a full cluster randomised trial. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02398682: Pre-results.

A comparison of hospital readmission rates between two general physicians with different outpatient review practices.

BACKGROUND: There has been a relentless increase in emergency medical admissions in the UK over recent years. Many of these patients suffer with chronic conditions requiring continuing medical attention. We wished to determine whether conventional outpatient clinic follow up after discharge has any impact on the rate of readmission to hospital. METHODS: Two consultant general physicians with the same patient case-mix but markedly different outpatient follow-up practice were chosen. Of 1203 patients discharged, one consultant saw twice as many patients in the follow-up clinic than the other (Dr A 9.8% v Dr B 19.6%). The readmission rate in the twelve months following discharge was compared in a retrospective analysis of hospital activity data. Due to the specialisation of the admitting system, patients mainly had cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease or had taken an overdose. Few had respiratory or infectious diseases. Outpatient follow-up was focussed on patients with cardiac disease. RESULTS: Risk of readmission increased significantly with age and length of stay of the original episode and was less for digestive system and musculo-skeletal disorders. 28.7% of patients discharged by Dr A and 31.5 % of those discharged by Dr B were readmitted at least once. Relative readmission risk was not significantly different between the consultants and there was no difference in the length of stay of readmissions. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing the proportion of patients with this age- and case-mix who are followed up in a hospital general medical outpatient clinic is unlikely to reduce the demand for acute hospital beds.

Is early treatment of anaemia with epoetin-alpha beneficial to pre-dialysis chronic kidney disease patients? Results of a multicentre, open-label, prospective, randomized, comparative group trial.

BACKGROUND: This multicentre, open-label prospective, randomized, comparative-group study evaluated the effects of maintaining haemoglobin (Hb) in pre-dialysis chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. METHODS: A total of 197 patients were randomized to start subcutaneous epoetin-alpha (SC-EPO; EPREX; 1000 U twice weekly) at an early stage of anaemia to maintain Hb at 11.0 +/- 1.0 g/dl (group A, n = 65), or to allow Hb to fall to < or =9.0 g/dl before starting SC-EPO (group B, n = 132) (2000 U three times weekly); and subsequently maintaining Hb at 11.0 +/- 1.0 g/dl. RESULTS: Of 132 patients randomized to group B, 55 progressed to treatment (-trigger). The study was prematurely terminated due to contraindication of the subcutaneous administration route. Mean weekly EPO doses at 1 year were 1471 U for group A; 820 U for group B; final doses were 2281 U for group A; 2099 U for group B. There was no significant difference between groups A and B with regard to left ventricular mass (-12.5 vs -9.7%; P = 0.82). In groups A and B, 48% and 52%, respectively, terminated the study because of dialysis/death, after a median of 36.3 and 27.3 months, respectively. CONCLUSION: Early intervention to correct anaemia in CKD patients did not have a significant impact on LVM, the primary efficacy variable. Time to dialysis/death was not significantly different between groups A and B.