A leadless cardiac pacemaker showed

In this single centre study, the authors assess the accuracy of surgeons and anesthetists in predicting the time it will take them to complete an operation or procedure and therefore explain some of the difficulties encountered in operating theatre scheduling. The study was set in operating theatres at a level 1 trauma centre serving a population of about 370 000. Participants were 92 operating theatre staff including surgical consultants, surgical registrars, anesthetic consultants, and anesthetic registrars. Participants were asked how long they thought their procedure would take, and this was compared with actual time data recorded at the end of the case. General surgeons underestimated the time required for the procedure by 31 minutes, meaning that procedures took, on average, 28.7% longer than predicted. Plastic surgeons underestimated by 5 minutes, with procedures taking an average of 4.5% longer than predicted. Orthopedic surgeons overestimated by 1 minute, with procedures taking an average of 1.1% less time than predicted. Anesthetists underestimated by 35 minutes, meaning that, on average, procedures took 167.5% longer than they predicted. The authors conclude that the inability of clinicians to predict the necessary time for a procedure is a significant cause of delay in the operating theatre. This study suggests that anesthetists are the most inaccurate and highlights the potential differences between specialties in what is considered part of the

Seven consensus statements developed by 23 international opinion leaders in the acute care of patients with severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) provide a clear interpretation of clinical trial results that compared intracranial pressure (ICP)-based management to a treatment protocol guided by CT-imaging and examination without ICP monitoring. Results of the BEST TRIP trial led to on-going debate over the value of ICP monitoring in sTBI. These new consensus statement, which will help guide practicing physicians and researchers, are free.

In ‘A Consensus-Based Interpretation of the Benchmark Evidence from South American Trials: Treatment of Intracranial Pressure Trial,’ Randall Chesnut, MD, University of Washington, Seattle, and an international team of researchers present their consensus opinions on the Benchmark Evidence from South American Trials: Treatment of Intracranial Pressure (BEST TRIP). The seven consensus statements that emerged from their discussions help clarify the trial protocols, the different patient outcomes with and without ICP monitoring, the validity of the trial, and the main implications of the trial results.

‘This brief but eloquent consensus report helps revisit the overall implications and interpretations derived from the BEST TRIP trial,’ says John T. Povlishock, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Neurotrauma and Professor, Medical College of Virginia Campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. ‘As noted by the authors, this consensus document reframes many of the controversial issues generated in this initial trial, calling for a more critical evaluation of the study and its overall interpretation. From my perspective as Editor-in-Chief, I believe the consensus positions detailed therein help place this trial in the appropriate intellectual framework, while highlighting the continued need for more rigorous evaluation of intracranial hypertension, its monitoring, and its implications for traumatically brain-injured patients.’ EurekAlert

You can whack it with a hammer, attack it with a drill, even stab it with a screwdriver. But try as you might, you won’t be able to tamper with a high-tech pill dispenser designed by mechanical engineering students at Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering.

Which is exactly the point.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that drug overdoses kill more than 44,000 Americans annually, including more than 16,000 deaths from prescription drugs. Federal officials also say that at least one in 20 Americans ingests drugs prescribed for someone else. Concerned about these alarming statistics, experts at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Injury Research and Policy challenged a team of Johns Hopkins senior mechanical engineers to design and build an anti-theft and tamper-resistant pill dispenser.

‘We needed this personal pill ‘safe’ to have tamper resistance, personal identification capabilities, and a locking mechanism that allows only a pharmacist to load the device with pills,’ said Kavi Bhalla, assistant professor at the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and one of the team’s mentors for the project.

Classmates Megan Carney, Joseph Hajj, Joseph Heaney, and Welles Sakmar

A new study co-authored by investigators at the University of Massachusetts Medical School found that there is no correlation between opioids administered in the emergency room setting and Press Ganey ED patient satisfaction scores, one of the most commonly used metrics for measuring patient satisfaction. Based on these findings, the study