September 2017
30 ArticlesNo Section
Anticipating care needs of patients after discharge from hospital: Frail and elderly patients without physiological abnormality on day of admission are more likely to require social services input
Acute admissions to hospital are rising. As a part of a service evaluation we examined pathways of patients following hospital discharge depending on data available on admission to hospital.
Novel biomarkers for sepsis: A narrative review
Sepsis is a prevalent condition among hospitalized patients that carries a high risk of morbidity and mortality. Rapid recognition of sepsis as the cause of deterioration is desirable, so effective... more
Exercise training in patients with pulmonary and systemic hypertension: A unique therapy for two different diseases
Pulmonary hypertension is a potentially life-threatening condition. Given its evolving definition, the incidence and prevalence of the disease is difficult to define, but registries suggest an... more
Letter to the Editor
When subclinical hypothyroidism becomes clinically diagnosed
Lili Ilse Elvenes (*1882 Denmark–†1931 Germany) was one of the first transgender women who ultimately died from on a series of risky and essentially unproven operations to remove her male parts and... more
Gadolinium depositions after the application of the hepatospecific gadolinium-based contrast agent gadoxetate disodium
Gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) are widely used in clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Since their approval for clinical use in 1988, the frequency of GBCA application has steadily... more
What are nonspecific complaints and what are their causes and outcomes? The common unknown unknowns of medicine
Pain, breathlessness, bleeding, deranged vital signs and the acute inability to either walk or talk usually mandate immediate hospital admission. All these presentations are associated with a... more
Deaths and medical admissions in the UK show an unexplained and sustained peak after 2011
Since 2011 deaths in the UK have undergone a dramatic increase far beyond anything forecast by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in their 2004- through to 2012-based forecasts [1].... more
Chagas disease in Europe: A long way to go
We appreciate the comments by Ramos to our review on Chagas' disease (CD) in Europe [1,2]. We congratulate the Author and his group for the efforts made to identify people of Latin American (LA)... more
Multiparametric assessment of “fluid status” in heart failure
Usually in stable and asymptomatic patient with reduced ejection fraction the judgment to suspend or not diuretic therapy purely depend on clinical and intuitive evaluation and not on objective... more
Infections worsen prognosis of patients with cirrhosis irrespective of the liver disease stage
Cirrhosis is the end stage of various diseases of the liver. The leading causes of liver diseases are hepatitis B and C viral infections (HBV and HCV), alcohol consumption and cryptogenetic disease [... more
Determinants for medication reconciliation interventions on hospital admission and discharge: An observational multi-centre study
MR is the process of creating and maintaining an, as accurate as possible, overview of patient's actual medication use, in order to prescribe and provide correct medication to the patient at all... more
Diagnostic process-how to do it right? The SMART medicine initiative
Diagnostic tools are essential, expensive, and limited hospital's resources. Inappropriate use of blood tests or diagnostic imaging during the medical investigation compromises dramatically the... more
Obesity discrimination in healthcare
Existence of prejudice and discrimination in the society is not new. All societies have histories of discrimination in one form or the other, with the weak, the less powerful, or the minorities being... more
Body mass index and all-cause mortality among type 2 diabetes mellitus patients
We thank Safiri S and Ayubi E [1]. for their methodological observations to our manuscript [2]. We agree with their affirmation that the categorization of variables implies loss of information, but... more
Chagas diseases: Opportunities for internists
We read with interest the recent paper, “Chagas disease in Europe: A review for the internist in the globalized world”, published in your journal. Antinori and colleagues masterfully review Chagas... more
Triple therapy with dual antiplatelet treatment and direct oral anticoagulants — Response to a letter
We would like to thank Sorigue et al. [1] for their interest in our article on the antithrombotic management of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) who require percutaneous coronary intervention (... more
Saddle pulmonary embolism in hemodynamically stable patients: To lyse or not to lyse? An issue in no guidelines land
Previous studies have shown an incidence of saddle pulmonary embolism (SPE) ranging between 6% to 9.1% in non-high-risk patients [1,2]. SPE is generally defined as a thromboembolus straddling the... more
A reduction in acute thrombotic admissions during a period of unexplained increased deaths and medical admissions in the UK
Since 2011 in England there has been a period of unexplained higher deaths and medical admissions which policy makers have assumed are attributable to the increasing age of the population and the... more
Comments on prospective study of metabolic syndrome as a mortality marker in chronic coronary heart disease patients
We have read the article by Mayer O Jr et al. that was published in European Journal of Internal Medicine [1]. The authors tried to assess the effect of metabolic syndrome (MetS) as assessed by... more
Epidemiological trends of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Split-Dalmatia County, Croatia from 2006 to 2014
Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD), commonly called inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), are chronic, relapsing diseases of unknown origin. Although the incidence rates of these diseases... more
Narrative Review
Antidiabetic drugs and stroke risk. Current evidence
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the major cause of morbidity and mortality for individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D). In particular, the risk for stroke is twice that of patients without diabetes,... more
Original Article
Long-term outcomes in older patients with hyperglycemia on admission for ischemic stroke
Evaluate the association between admission blood glucose (ABG) and mortality in older patients with or without diabetes mellitus (DM) hospitalized for acute ischemic stroke (AIS).
Good adherence to therapy with statins reduces the risk of adverse clinical outcomes even among very elderly. Evidence from an Italian real-life investigation
To assess whether in individuals aged 80years or older adherence to statins is accompanied by a reduced risk of all-cause mortality and major cardiovascular events.
Deprivation status and the hospital costs of an emergency medical admission
Deprivation has been shown to adversely affect health outcomes. However, whether deprivation increases hospitalisation costs is uncertain. We have examined the relationship between deprivation and... more
Baseline functional status as the strongest predictor of in-hospital mortality in elderly patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation: Results of the NONAVASC registry
Atrial fibrillation (AF) has been associated with higher mortality. We aimed to identify the baseline predictors of in-hospital mortality among elderly patients with non-valvular AF (NVAF)... more
The clinical usefulness of prognostic prediction models in critical illness
Critical illness is any immediately life-threatening disease or trauma and results in several million deaths globally every year. Responsive hospital systems for managing critical illness include... more
Anaemia, but not iron deficiency, is associated with clinical symptoms and quality of life in patients with severe heart failure and palliative home care: A substudy of the PREFER trial
To explore the relationships between anaemia or iron deficiency (ID) and symptoms, quality of life (QoL), morbidity, and mortality.
Systolic blood pressure target in systemic arterial hypertension: Is lower ever better? Results from a community-based Caucasian cohort
Extensive evidence exists about the prognostic role of systolic blood pressure (SBP) reduction ≤140mmHg. Recently, the SPRINT trial successfully tested the strategy of lowering SBP
Derivation and validation model for hospital hypoglycemia
An objective and simple prognostic model for hospitalized patients with hypoglycemia could be helpful in guiding initial intensity of treatment.
Special Article
Make vital signs great again – A call for action
Vital signs are the simplest, cheapest and probably the most important information gathered on patients in hospital. In this narrative review we present a large amount of evidence that vital signs... more