Ventilation tubes have a significant role in maintaining a 'disease-free' state in the first six months after insertion. Further research is required to investigate the effect beyond six months. Clinicians should consider the possible adverse effects of grommet insertion before surgery is undertaken.

BackgroundExtremely high temperatures over many consecutive days have been linked to an increase in renal disease in several cities. This is becoming increasingly relevant with heatwaves becoming longer, more intense, and more frequent with climate change. This study aimed to extend the known relationship between daily temperature and kidney disease to include the incidence of eight temperature-prone specific renal disease categories – total renal disease, urolithiasis, renal failure, acute kidney injury (AKI), chronic kidney disease (CKD), urinary tract infections (UTIs), lower urinary tract infections (LUTIs) and pyelonephritis.MethodsDaily data was acquired for maximum, minimum and average temperature over the period of 1 July 2003 to 31 March 2014 during the warm season (October to March) in Adelaide, South Australia. Data for daily admissions to all metropolitan hospitals for renal disease, including 83,519 emergency department admissions and 42,957 inpatient admissions, was also obtained. Renal outcomes were analyzed using time-stratified negative binomial regression models, with the results aggregated by day. Incidence rate ratios (IRR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated for associations between the number of admissions and daily temperature.ResultsIncreases in daily temperature per 1 °C were associated with an increased incidence for all renal disease categories except for pyelonephritis. Minimum temperature was associated with the greatest increase in renal disease followed by average temperature and then maximum temperature. A 1°C increase in daily minimum temperature was associated with an increase in daily emergency department admissions for AKI (IRR 1.037, 95% CI: 1.026–1.048), renal failure (IRR 1.030, 95% CI: 1.022–1.039), CKD (IRR 1.017, 95% CI: 1.001–1.033) urolithiasis (IRR 1.015, 95% CI: 1.010–1.020), total renal disease (IRR 1.009, 95% CI: 1.006–1.011), UTIs (IRR 1.004, 95% CI: 1.000–1.007) and LUTIs (IRR 1.003, 95% CI: 1.000–1.006).ConclusionsAn increased frequency of renal disease, including urolithiasis, acute kidney injury and urinary tract infections, is predicted with increasing temperatures from climate change. These results have clinical and public health implications for the management of renal diseases and demand tailored health services. Future research is warranted to analyze individual renal diseases with more comprehensive information regarding renal risk factors, and studies examining mortality for specific renal diseases.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12940-017-0331-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background The US Kidney Donor Risk Index (KDRI) and the UK KDRI were developed to estimate the risk of graft failure following kidney transplantation. Neither score has been validated in the Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) population. Methods Using data from the Australia and New Zealand Organ Donor (ANZOD) and Dialysis and Transplant (ANZDATA) Registries, we included all adult deceased donor kidney-only transplants performed in ANZ from 2005 to 2016 (n = 6405). The KDRI was calculated using both the US donor-only and UK formulae. Three Cox models were constructed (Model 1: KDRI only; Model 2: Model 1 + transplant characteristics; Model 3: Model 2 + recipient characteristics) and compared using Harrell’s C-statistics for the outcomes of death-censored graft survival and overall graft survival. Results Both scores were strongly associated with death-censored and overall graft survival (P < 0.0001 in all models). In the KDRI-only models, discrimination of death-censored graft survival was moderately good with C-statistics of 0.63 and 0.59 for the US and UK scores, respectively. Adjusting for transplant characteristics resulted in marginal improvements of the US KDRI to 0.65 and the UK KDRI to 0.63. The addition of recipient characteristics again resulted in marginal improvements of the US KDRI to 0.70 and the UK KDRI to 0.68. Similar trends were seen for the discrimination of overall graft survival. Conclusions The US and UK KDRI scores were moderately good at discriminating death-censored and overall graft survival in the ANZ population, with the US score performing slightly better in all models.