Clinical Outcomes and Mortality Impact of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in Patients With Carbon Monoxide Poisoning.

OBJECTIVES: Carbon monoxide poisoning affects 50,000 per year in the United States alone. Mortality is approximately 3%, and up to 40% of survivors suffer from permanent neurocognitive and affective deficits. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has shown benefit on reducing the long-term neurologic sequelae of carbon monoxide poisoning but has not demonstrated improved survival. The objective of this study is to assess the efficacy of hyperbaric oxygen for acute and long-term mortality in carbon monoxide poisoning using a large clinical databank. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis. SETTING: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center healthcare system (Pittsburgh, PA). PATIENTS: One-thousand ninety-nine unique encounters of adult patients with carbon monoxide poisoning. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Baseline demographics, laboratory values, hospital charge transactions, discharge disposition, and clinical information from charting were obtained from the electronic medical record. In propensity-adjusted analysis, hyperbaric oxygen therapy was associated with a reduction in inpatient mortality (absolute risk reduction, 2.1% [3.7-0.9%]; p = 0.001) and a reduction in 1-year mortality (absolute risk reduction, 2.1% [3.8-0.4%]; p = 0.013). CONCLUSIONS: These data demonstrate that hyperbaric oxygen is associated with reduced acute and reduced 1-year mortality. Further studies are needed on the mortality effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in carbon monoxide poisoning.

Resource use in decompensated heart failure by disease progression categories.

The purpose of this study was to quantify the total hospital resource use for decompensated heart failure according to disease progression categories. Clinical and cost information was obtained from an electronic data repository and chart review. During the 1-year period from June 2002 to June 2003, qualified patients were categorized based on disease progression as (1) new onset, (2) known heart failure, or (3) readmission. The primary outcome variables were total hospital resource use and resource use by services. Analysis of variance, Scheffé analysis for pairwise comparisons, and chi-square analysis were performed to determine differences among groups. Total hospitalization costs are similar whether it is a new diagnosis of heart failure, known diagnosis, or readmission. Among the 3 categories, 5 services contained statistically significant differences in costs (P<.05): echocardiography, electrophysiology, neurodiagnostic, nuclear cardiology, and pharmacy. Careful analysis of hospital resource use by services for heart failure patients provides opportunities for institutional cost containment.