Safety and Outcome of Intracranial Pressure Monitor Placement Performed by Trauma Critical Care Surgeons.

INTRODUCTION: The Brain Trauma Foundation advises intracranial pressure monitor placement (ICPM) following traumatic brain injury (TBI) with a Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score ≤8 and an abnormal head computed tomographic scan (CT) finding. Prior studies demonstrated that ICPMs could be placed by non-neurosurgeons. We hypothesized that ICPM placement by trauma critical care surgeons (TCCS) would increase appropriate utilization (AU), decrease time to placement (TTP), and have equivalent complications to those placed by neurosurgeons. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed medical records of adult trauma patients admitted with a TBI in a historical control group (HCG) and practice change group (PCG). Demographics, Injury Severity Score (ISS), outcomes, ICPM placement by provider type, and time to placement were identified. Complications and appropriate utilization were recorded. RESULTS: 70 patients in the HCG and 84 patients in the PCG met criteria for inclusion. Demographics, arrival GCS, ICU GCS, ISS, and admission APACHE II scores were not statistically significant. AU was 7/70 for HCG vs 19/84 in the PCG (P = .04036). Median TTP was 6.5 hours for HCG vs 5.25 for PCG (P = .9308). Interquartile range showed the data clustered around an earlier placement time, 2.3-14.0 hours, in the PCG. Complications between the 2 groups were not statistically significant, 0/7 for HCG vs 5/19 for PCG (P = .2782). DISCUSSION: This study confirms that ICPMs can be safely placed by TCCS. Our results demonstrate that placement of ICPMs by TCCS improves AU and possibly improves TTP.

Monte Carlo simulation of expert judgments on human errors in chemical analysis--a case study of ICP-MS.

Monte Carlo simulation of expert judgments on human errors in a chemical analysis was used for determination of distributions of the error quantification scores (scores of likelihood and severity, and scores of effectiveness of a laboratory quality system in prevention of the errors). The simulation was based on modeling of an expert behavior: confident, reasonably doubting and irresolute expert judgments were taken into account by means of different probability mass functions (pmfs). As a case study, 36 scenarios of human errors which may occur in elemental analysis of geological samples by ICP-MS were examined. Characteristics of the score distributions for three pmfs of an expert behavior were compared. Variability of the scores, as standard deviation of the simulated score values from the distribution mean, was used for assessment of the score robustness. A range of the score values, calculated directly from elicited data and simulated by a Monte Carlo method for different pmfs, was also discussed from the robustness point of view. It was shown that robustness of the scores, obtained in the case study, can be assessed as satisfactory for the quality risk management and improvement of a laboratory quality system against human errors.