Models for Implementing Emergency Department-Initiated Buprenorphine With Referral for Ongoing Medication Treatment at Emergency Department Discharge in Diverse Academic Centers.

There has been a substantial rise in the number of publications and training opportunities on the care and treatment of emergency department (ED) patients with opioid use disorder over the past several years. The American College of Emergency Physicians recently published recommendations for providing buprenorphine to patients with opioid use disorder, but barriers to implementing this clinical practice remain. We describe the models for implementing ED-initiated buprenorphine at 4 diverse urban, academic medical centers across the country as part of a federally funded effort termed "Project ED Health." These 4 sites successfully implemented unique ED-initiated buprenorphine programs as part of a comparison of implementation facilitation to traditional educational dissemination on the uptake of ED-initiated buprenorphine. Each site describes the elements central to the ED process, including screening, treatment initiation, referral, and follow-up, while harnessing organizational characteristics, including ED culture. Finally, we discuss common facilitators to program success, including information technology and electronic medical record integration, hospital-level support, strong connections with outpatient partners, and quality improvement processes.

Emergency department-initiated buprenorphine protocols: A national evaluation.

OBJECTIVE: Emergency department-initiated buprenorphine (BUP) for opioid use disorder is an evidence-based practice, but limited data exist on BUP initiation practices in real-world settings. We sought to characterize protocols for BUP initiation among a geographically diverse sample of emergency departments (EDs). METHODS: In December 2020, we reviewed prestudy clinical BUP initiation protocols from all EDs participating in CTN0099 Emergency Department-INitiated bupreNOrphine VAlidaTION (ED-INNOVATION). We abstracted information on processes for identification of treatment-eligible patients, BUP administration, and discharge care. RESULTS: All participating ED-INNOVATION sites across 22 states submitted protocols; 31 protocols were analyzed. Identification of treatment-eligible patients: Most EDs 22 (71%) relied on clinician judgment to determine appropriateness of BUP treatment with only 7 (23%) requiring decision support tools or diagnosis checklists. Before BUP initiation, 27 (87%) protocols required a documented Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Scale (COWS) score; 4 (13%) required a clinical diagnosis of withdrawal with optional COWS score. Twenty-seven (87%) recommended a minimum COWS score of 8 for ED-initiated BUP. BUP administration: Initial BUP dose ranged from 2-16 mg (mode = 4). For continued withdrawal symptoms, 27 (87%) protocols recommended an interval of 30-60 minutes between first and second BUP dose. Total BUP dose in the ED ranged from 8 to 32 mg. Discharge care: Twenty-eight (90%) protocols recommended a BUP prescription (mode 16 mg daily) at discharge. Naloxone prescription and/or provision was suggested in 23 (74%) protocols. CONCLUSIONS: In this geographically diverse sample of EDs, protocols for ED-initiated BUP differed between sites. Future work should evaluate the association between this variation and patient outcomes.

[Measles: from a simple rash - to a fatal outcome ?] / Rougeole: du « simple rash ¼ à l'issue fatale.

Measles is a disease that was considered as relegated to medical history, since an extremely efficient vaccine had been developed. However, in Switzerland and elsewhere there has been an increasing number of epidemics in the past years, and the highest number of new cases this year. Based on two clinical cases showing very different outcomes, we discuss the disease, its clinic, complications, management, and the challenges remaining in obtaining a sufficient vaccination coverage worldwide as well as in our country.

La rougeole est une maladie que l'on pensait pouvoir reléguer aux annales de la médecine, suite au développement d'un vaccin efficace. On assiste pourtant à une recrudescence d'épidémies en Suisse comme ailleurs, avec un nombre record de cas cette année. Sur la base de deux cas montrant des décours très différents, nous discutons la maladie, sa clinique, ses complications, sa prise en charge et les défis que pose encore la réalisation d'une couverture vaccinale efficace au niveau régional comme global.

Neural substrates of cognitive biases during probabilistic inference.

Decision making often requires simultaneously learning about and combining evidence from various sources of information. However, when making inferences from these sources, humans show systematic biases that are often attributed to heuristics or limitations in cognitive processes. Here we use a combination of experimental and modelling approaches to reveal neural substrates of probabilistic inference and corresponding biases. We find systematic deviations from normative accounts of inference when alternative options are not equally rewarding; subjects' choice behaviour is biased towards the more rewarding option, whereas their inferences about individual cues show the opposite bias. Moreover, inference bias about combinations of cues depends on the number of cues. Using a biophysically plausible model, we link these biases to synaptic plasticity mechanisms modulated by reward expectation and attention. We demonstrate that inference relies on direct estimation of posteriors, not on combination of likelihoods and prior. Our work reveals novel mechanisms underlying cognitive biases and contributions of interactions between reward-dependent learning, decision making and attention to high-level reasoning.