Background: Patient falls in hospitals are common and may lead to negative outcomes such as injuries, prolonged hospitalization and legal liability. Consequently, various hospital falls prevention programs have been implemented in the last decades. However, most of the programs had no sustained effects on falls reduction over extended periods of time.

Background: Hospital inpatient falls are common and may lead to injuries and prolonged hospitalization. Although hospital studies have reported overall fall rates and injuries associated with falls, few have addressed population characteristics and circumstances of falls across clinical departments within a hospital setting. Objective: To determine inpatient fall rates in an urban public hospital and to explore associated characteristics across clinical departments. Methods: The study was conducted in a 300-bed urban public hospital in Switzerland from 1999 to 2003. Patient data and data from the hospital’s standardized fall reporting system on hospital inpatients’ first falls, along with associated characteristics, across the departments of internal medicine, geriatrics and surgery, were analyzed. Descriptive statistics and statistical tests: χ² and ANOVA tests with multiple comparisons tests (post-hoc analysis) were used. Results: Over this 5-year period, 34,972 patients were hospitalized (female 53.6%; mean age 67.3 ± 19.3 years; mean length of stay 11.9 ± 13.2 days) including 2,512 patients (7.5%) who experienced at least one fall during their hospitalization (geriatrics 24.8%; internal medicine 8.8%; surgery 1.9%). The fall rates per 1,000 patient (adjusted for age) days differed significantly between all of the departments (geriatrics 10.7; internal medicine 9.6; surgery: 3.2) (p < 0.001). Overall, 30.1% of the patients who fell experienced minor injuries and 5.1% major injuries. In geriatrics, fall-related circumstances such as transferring were more common (40.4%) than in medicine (33%) or surgery (30.4%) (p < 0.001), whereas falling out of bed was rarer (16.4%) (surgery 27.1%; internal medicine 20.5%) (p < 0.001). In addition, the prevalence of risk factors among patients who fell varied significantly among clinical departments, except for impaired cognition and narcotic use. Conclusion: In the hospital studied, inpatient falls are significantly more common in departments of geriatrics and internal medicine than in surgical departments. Fall rates, related injuries and circumstances of inpatient falls varied significantly among clinical departments, probably due to differences in patient characteristics. When monitoring falls, hospitals should therefore consider differences in characteristics associated with patient falls across clinical departments. High priorities should be allocated in view of identifying patients at risk of falling and implementing fall prevention strategies and interventions.

was used to analyze food for the presence of Listeria monocytogenes. Food samples were artificially contaminated to develop two procedures to detect the organism following enrichment steps. Procedure A was based on dilution of the enrichment broth followed by lysis of the bacteria and direct analysis of the lysate with PCR. With procedure A and artificially contaminated food samples, it was possible to detect fewer than 10 bacteria per 10 g of food. In procedure B, centrifugation was used to concentrate bacteria before lysis and PCR. With procedure A, 330 naturally contaminated food samples of several types were analyzed. Twenty samples were found to be positive for L. monocytogenes, which was in agreement with the classical culture technique. By using procedure B on a subset of 100 food samples, 14 were found to be positive by PCR whereas the classical culture method detected only 13. Analysis times, including enrichment steps, were 56 and 32 h with procedures A and B, respectively.

In a prospective randomized clinical trial, three colon cleansing methods for colonoscopy were compared with regard to a) side effects, b) patient acceptance, c) residual liquid and stool during colonoscopy, and d) quality of the examination. The patients were randomly assigned to one of the following three groups for colon preparation: Group 1 (n = 100) 4 liters of Golytely, group 2 (n = 102) 2 liters of Golytely combined with Cascara-Salax, and group 3 (n = 98) X-Prep (a Senna preparation) combined with an enema. X-Prep (group 3) caused significantly more abdominal cramps than 4 liters of Golytely (group 1) or 2 liters of Golytely with Cascara-Salax (group 2) (p less than 0.001). Vomiting was most frequent in group 1 (p less than 0.05 vs. group 3). The patients therefore preferred X-Prep to 4 liters of Golytely (p less than 0.01). The cleanest colon was obtained with 4 liters of Golytely, while 2 liters of Golytely with Cascara-Salax was least efficacious. The quality of the examination was equal in groups 1 and 3, and clearly better than in group 2 (p less than 0.01). We thus conclude that while 4 liters of Golytely and X-Prep plus enema have equivalent cleansing efficacy for colonoscopy, patients judged X-Prep to be less unpleasant.

Compared to Ultraflex stents, Wallstents have several significant short-term and long-term advantages in the palliative treatment of malignancy of the esophagus and cardia.