Intracranial haemorrhage and falls: cause or effect?

INTRODUCTION: A difficult question in autopsy practice is whether intracranial haemorrhage has resulted from or brought about a fall. MATERIAL AND METHODS: To address this we undertook a retrospective study of all autopsy reports (N = 2126) complied over a 10 year period (2009-2018). Of 720 patients who underwent a comprehensive post mortem neuropathologic examination we found 226 patients who had a history of a fall. RESULTS: Of the 226 with a history of fall, 175 (79%) had an intracranial haemorrhage which was classified as truamatic (n = 134, 77%) or spontaneous (n = 41, 23%. Within the traumatic group, falls from a standing height (51%) were more common than falls involving stairs (31%) or falls from a height (12%). Cerebral contusional injury (51%) and subdural haemorrhage (45%) were the most common type of haemorrhage in the traumatic group. In the spontaneous haemorrhage group cerebral amyloid angiopathy (49%) was the commonest detected cause and was typically lobar in distribution). CONCLUSION: We are of the view that a comprehensive analysis of fatal falls with intracranial haemorrhage warrants a detailed neuropathologic examination as part of the overall death analysis.

Remote telemonitoring is associated with improved patient safety and decreased workload of nurses.

Objective: There is significant interest in exploring new technologies to improve efficiency and work-life quality for nurses. We aimed to evaluate the impact of a remote video monitoring (RVM) solution that provides continuous in-hospital patient audio-video (AV) monitoring by technicians. Methods: The RVM system that we developed, consisting of 2-way AV communication and a continuous O2 saturation monitoring device, has been deployed in all inpatient units within our hospital network, including 3 acute care hospitals and 2 rehabilitation facilities. Data were collected before and after implementation on safety measures including fall rates and adverse events, along with device utilization and number of escalation events requiring nursing intervention. Nurse job satisfaction was assessed with surveys. Results: Data were collected from April 2020 to May 2022. A total of 2087 patients were monitored at 5 hospital sites. The technicians identified 54,716 safety concerns that required them to intervene remotely and address with the patient. Of these, 46,289 required escalation of nursing staff, who were called to the bedside through the RVM alerting technology. Importantly, 8427 safety concerns were managed solely by the technicians without the need for nursing intervention, resulting in 8427 avoided nursing visits to the bedside. The surveyed nurses reported that the RVM technology provided reassurance that additional support was available to assist them in managing their patients. Patients and their families also expressed high degree of satisfaction. Since implementation, the rates of falls and other adverse events have been reduced, with the greatest impact in patients on high-flow oxygen. Code blue and mortality rates decreased from 7% to 1%. Conclusions: The use of RVM has proven to be a successful innovation at our hospital and has led to improved patient safety. RVM was able to reduce 8427 individual nurse visits to the bedside, allowing nurses to manage the care of patients more effectively while improving both patient and staff satisfaction.

Gene-Environment Interactions in Vitamin D Status and Sun Exposure: A Systematic Review with Recommendations for Future Research.

Vitamin D is essential for good health. Dermal vitamin D production is dependent on environmental factors such as season and latitude, and personal factors such as time spent outdoors and genetics. Varying heritability of vitamin D status by season has been reported, suggesting that gene-environment interactions (GxE) may play a key role. Thus, understanding GxE might significantly improve our understanding of determinants of vitamin D status. The objective of this review was to survey the existing methods in GxE on vitamin D studies and report on GxE effect estimates. We searched the Embase, Medline (Ovid), and Web of Science (Core Collection) databases. We included only primary research that reported on GxE effects on vitamin D status using 25-hydroxyvitamin D as a biomarker. Sun exposure was the only environmental exposure identified in these studies. The quality assessment followed the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for cohort studies. Seven studies were included in the final narrative synthesis. We evaluate the limitations and findings of the available GxE in vitamin D research and provide recommendations for future GxE research. The systematic review was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42021238081).