Objective: To determine the relationship between hospital length of stay (LOS) and quality of care in patients admitted for congestive heart failure (CHF). Methods: This observational study was conducted in the medical wards of the Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland. A random sample of 371 patients was drawn from the 1084 patients discharged alive with a principal diagnosis of CHF between January 1997 and December 1998. Explicit criteria grouped into three scores were used to assess the quality of processes of care: admission work-up (admission score); evaluation and treatment during the stay (treatment score); and readiness for discharge (discharge score). The association between LOS and quality of care was analysed using linear regression with adjustment for clinical characteristics. Results: The mean proportion of criteria met were 80% for the admission score, 66% for the treatment score, and 76% for the discharge score. Mean (SD) LOS was 13.2 (8.8) days. The admission score was not associated with LOS, but the treatment score increased by 0.5% (95% CI 0.3 to 0.7; p<0.001) with each additional day in hospital and the discharge score increased by 2.5% (95% CI 1.6 to 3.3; p<0.001) per day from admission to day 10 but remained unchanged thereafter. Adjustment for potential confounders did not substantially modify these relationships. Conclusions: In patients with CHF there is a significant association between LOS and the quality of the treatment provided, as well as with readiness for discharge. Appropriate reorganisation of processes of care should accompany attempts at reducing LOS to avoid detrimental effects on quality of care. C ongestive heart failure (CHF) is among the leading causes of hospitalisation in most developed countries.1-4 Most of the costs of treating this disease are generated by hospital admissions, so reducing the length of stay (LOS) in hospital may yield significant savings. However, understanding a patient's situation, performing investigations, and selecting the appropriate treatment requires time. Shortening the hospital LOS may therefore increase the risk of not completing the evaluations and treatments needed and of discharging insufficiently stabilised patients. On the other hand, once investigations and treatments have been completed, no additional benefit will accrue from extending the hospital stay. Keeping patients in hospital longer than necessary generates unnecessary costs and exposes patients to complications such as nosocomial infections. To understand better how quality of care relates to the duration of hospitalisation, we have examined the relationship between LOS and explicit quality of care criteria in patients with CHF. METHODS Setting and patientsThe study was conducted in the general internal medicine wards of the University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland. This 1200 bed urban public hospital is the main community and teaching hospital for the area. A random sample of 371 patients was drawn from the 1084 patients discharged alive with a principal diag...

Objective: To document the trends in reperfusion therapy for ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) in Switzerland. Design: National prospective multicentre registry, AMIS Plus (acute myocardial infarction and unstable angina in Switzerland), of patients admitted with acute coronary syndromes. Setting: 54 hospitals of varying size and capability in Switzerland. Patients: 7098 of 11 845 AMIS Plus patients who presented with ST segment elevation or left bundle branch block on the ECG at admission. Main outcome measures: In-hospital mortality and its predictors at admission by multivariate analysis. Results: The proportion of patients treated by primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) progressively increased from 1997 to 2002, while the proportion with thrombolysis or no reperfusion decreased (from 8.0% to 43.1%, from 47.2% to 25.6%, and from 44.8% to 31.4%, respectively). Overall in-hospital mortality decreased over the study period from 12.2% to 6.7% (p , 0.001). Main in-hospital mortality predictors by multivariate analysis were primary PCI (odds ratio (OR) 0.52, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.33 to 0.81), thrombolysis (OR 0.63, 95% CI 0.47 to 0.83), and Killip class III (OR 3.61, 95% CI 2.49 to 5.24) and class IV (OR 5.97, 95% CI 3.51 to 10.17) at admission. When adjusted for the year, multivariate analysis did not show PCI to be significantly superior to thrombolysis for in-hospital mortality (OR 1.2 for PCI better, 95% CI 0.8 to 1.9, p = 0.42). Conclusion: Primary PCI has become the preferred mode of reperfusion for STEMI since 2002 in Switzerland, whereas use of intravenous thrombolysis has decreased from 1997 to 2002. Furthermore, there was a major reduction of in-hospital mortality over the same period. Since it was found in the mid 1970s that acute myocardial infarction resulted from a ruptured atherosclerotic plaque, causing thrombosis and occlusion of a coronary artery, 1 and that restoration of flow salvages myocardium, major attention has been focused on reperfusion therapy. Several studies have documented the survival benefit provided by a thrombolytic, first by intracoronary administration and later intravenously.2-5 Numerous randomised controlled trials soon followed comparing intravenous thrombolysis with mechanical reperfusion by primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). A meta-analysis of 23 randomised controlled trials comparing these two modes of reperfusion in ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) showed a greater benefit associated with primary PCI in terms of short and long term mortality, non-fatal reinfarction, and stroke. 6 On the basis of this information, national and international societies of cardiology have established guidelines concerning the management of STEMI.7 8 To assess how these translate into the ''real world'' of daily clinical practice, several short and long term registry based studies have been conducted. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]

Elevated levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) have been reported in patients with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and may represent an inflammatory marker of cardiovascular risk. However, the association of CRP with SBD in presumed healthy elderly subjects is unknown.In total, 851 (58.5% females) 68-yr-old subjects, who were free of any known cardiac or sleep disorders, were prospectively examined. Subjects underwent unattended polygraphy, and the apnoea/hypopnoea index (AHI) and oxyhaemoglobin desaturation index (ODI) were assessed. Elevated levels of CRP were found on the morning after the sleep study in patients with more severe SDB. A significant correlation was found between CRP levels, time spent at night with arterial oxygen saturation ,90% and ODI. No association was found between CRP levels and AHI. After adjustments for body mass index, smoking status, hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidaemia, a significant association remained between CRP levels and ODI .10 events?h -1 .CRP levels were frequently increased in a large sample of elderly subjects free of major cardiovascular disease. CRP levels were not correlated with the AHI and the indices of sleep fragmentation; the ODI .10 events?h -1 was the strongest predictor of raised CRP level.The present results suggest that, in the elderly, intermittent hypoxaemia may underlie inflammatory processes leading to cardiovascular morbidity. KEYWORDS: C-reactive protein, elderly, hypoxaemia, inflammation, sleep apnoea O bstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) is a highly prevalent disorder affecting 2-4% of the general population and is considered an independent risk factor for cardiovascular diseases [1-3], particularly hypertension, coronary artery disease, heart failure and stroke [4,5]. Furthermore, newly diagnosed OSAS patients, free of classical cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension, diabetes and smoking, may have early signs of atherosclerosis [6]. Although the pathophysiology of cardiovascular risk is mutifactorial, sympathetic hypertonia [7], endothelial dysfunction [8, 9] and insulin resistance [10] have been postulated as factors initiating and sustaining inflammatory microvascular alterations and therefore atherosclerosis [11,12]. In middle-aged OSAS patients, C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation in atherosclerotic lesions [13], is elevated in severe cases [14] and decreases after treatment with nasal continuous positive airway pressure [15]. Despite the putative role of CRP in cardiovascular risk in OSAS, studies conducted to date have yielded contradictory results, with some showing an independent association with disease severity in adults [16][17][18][19] and children [20,21], and others showing no relationship [22,23]. Moreover, the association between obesity and CRP [24] raised the question as to whether elevated CRP reflects the effects of obesity or whether it is specific to OSAS itself.In the elderly, the prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) is estimated to be higher than in middle-aged subjects. AN...

Readmission rate is often used as an indicator for the quality of care. However, only unplanned readmissions may have a link with substandard quality of care. We compared two databases of the Geneva University Hospitals to determine which information is needed to distinguish planned from unplanned readmissions. All patients readmitted within 42 days after a first stay in the wards of the Department of Internal Medicine were identified. One of the databases contained encoded information needed to compute DRGs. The other database consisted of full-text discharge reports, addressed to the referring physician. Encoded reports allowed the classification of 64% of the readmissions, whereas full-text reports could classify 97% of the readmissions (p <0.001). The concordance between encoded reports and full-text reports was fair (kappa = 0.40). We conclude that encoded reports alone are not sufficient to distinguish planned from unplanned readmissions and that the automation of detailed clinical databases seems promising.

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