Patient-Level Predictors of Psychiatric Readmission in Substance Use Disorders

Repeated psychiatric readmissions are a particular challenge in the treatment of substance use disorders and are associated with substantial burden for patients and their associates and for healthcare providers. Factors affecting readmission rates are heterogeneous and need to be identified to better allocate resources. Within the Swiss healthcare system, such data on substance use disorder patients are largely missing. Understanding these factors might bear important implications for future healthcare planning. Thus here, we examine risk factors of inpatient readmission. We retrospectively analyzed all admissions to the hospital's department of addictive disorders in the year 2016. Patients included in the study were followed over a period of 1 year after discharge regarding readmissions to the clinic. Besides the demographic, social, and economic data, we extracted data concerning patient history, admission, and discharge as well as clinical data regarding type and number of substances abused and comorbid diagnoses. In order to describe severity of cases, we furthermore included the scores of the Health of the Nation Outcome Scale (HoNOS) at admission and at discharge as documented in the medical database. Of the 554 patients included in the study, 228 (41.2%) were readmitted within 12 months. Previous admissions, concomitant use of different substances, presence of psychosis or mania, and a higher severity score at discharge increased the likelihood of readmission. The odds for readmission were furthermore higher in patients not being married, living alone, and being unemployed. When all (bivariate) statistically significant factors are included into a logistic regression model, the previous number of admissions and the HoNOS clinical score at discharge significantly contributed to this model. Our findings stress that patients with higher symptom load at discharge are prone to be readmitted within 12 months. The same applies for patients with previous admissions. These findings suggest that the development of specific interventions to prevent premature discharge before satisfactory symptom remission, in particular in those patients with previous admissions in their patient history, might help to prevent readmissions

Lidar intercomparisons on algorithm and system level in the frame of EARLINET.

EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network to Establish an Aerosol Climatology) is a joint project of 19 lidar groups operating aerosol lidar systems at 21 stations over a large part of Europe, plus one group focussing on mathematical problems associated with the retrieval of aerosol properties from lidar observations. The main goal of EARLINET is to establish a comprehensive statistically representative data set of the aerosol vertical distribution. For this purpose, each lidar group performs vertical aerosol soundings on a routine basis three times a week on preselected days and times. Additionally several special measurements (e.g. on Saharan dust, temporal cycles, rural and urban differences, long and medium range transport) are part of the project.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Lidar intercomparisons on algorithm and system level in the frame of EARLINET

Lidar intercomparison experiments involving 19 lidar groups from 11 different European countries have been performed in the frame of the EU project EARLINET (A European Aerosol Research Network to Establish an Aerosol Climatology). EARLINET's main goal is to establish an aerosol climatology on the basis of routine lidar measurements on preselected days and times. Therefore intercomparisons between the used lidar systems are essential for the assessment of a high quality data set from these observations. The determination of aerosol backscatter and extinction profiles has been tested separately on algorithm and system level. For the algorithm intercomparison, synthetic lidar data have been used and the deviations of the prescribed aerosol profile from the profiles determined by the individual groups have been calculated. They were in the order of a few percent for both extinction and backscatter determination. System intercomparisons have been done testing at least two systems at a time at one place. From each experiment, 2-3 episodes have been taken in which the systems had to meet the predefined quality criteria. The system accuracy in terms of aerosol backscatter and extinction profiles could be stated to be better than 20 % in all cases, in most cases even better than 10 %. The report gives a detailed description of the applied methods and of all results achieved during the intercomparison experiments

Lidar intercomparisons on algorithm and system level in the frame of EARLINET.

EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network to Establish an Aerosol Climatology) is a joint project of 19 lidar groups operating aerosol lidar systems at 21 stations over a large part of Europe, plus one group focussing on mathematical problems associated with the retrieval of aerosol properties from lidar observations. The main goal of EARLINET is to establish a comprehensive statistically representative data set of the aerosol vertical distribution. For this purpose, each lidar group performs vertical aerosol soundings on a routine basis three times a week on preselected days and times. Additionally several special measurements (e.g. on Saharan dust, temporal cycles, rural and urban differences, long and medium range transport) are part of the project.Peer Reviewe

Die große Kontroverse: ,Same Day´ oder ,Next Day´?

Der Artikel befasst sich mit dem Thema Distributionslogistik insbesondere mit der Fragestellung "Same Day oder Next Day Delivery. Diese Frage, die seit einigen Jahren Onlinehändler massiv beschäftigt, wird in diesem Beitrag im Rahmen einer Expertenumfrage beantwortet. Verschiedene Experten benennen ihre Argumente für oder gegen eine tagesgleiche Auslieferung. Der Artikel befasst sich mit dem Thema Distributionslogistik insbesondere mit der Fragestellung ,,Same Day oder Next Day Delivery. Diese Frage, die seit einigen Jahren Onlinehändler massiv beschäftigt, wird in diesem Beitrag im Rahmen einer Expertenumfrage beantwortet. Verschiedene Experten benennen ihre Argumente für oder gegen eine tagesgleiche Auslieferung

Lidar intercomparisons on algorithm and system level in the frame of EARLINET.

EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network to Establish an Aerosol Climatology) is a joint project of 19 lidar groups operating aerosol lidar systems at 21 stations over a large part of Europe, plus one group focussing on mathematical problems associated with the retrieval of aerosol properties from lidar observations. The main goal of EARLINET is to establish a comprehensive statistically representative data set of the aerosol vertical distribution. For this purpose, each lidar group performs vertical aerosol soundings on a routine basis three times a week on preselected days and times. Additionally several special measurements (e.g. on Saharan dust, temporal cycles, rural and urban differences, long and medium range transport) are part of the project.Peer Reviewe

Optical and microphysical characterization of biomass-burning and industrial-pollution aerosols from multiwavelength lidar and aircraft measurements

[1] During the Lindenberg Aerosol Characterization Experiment (LACE 98) simultaneous measurements with ground-based and airborne lidars and with two aircraft equipped with aerosol in situ instrumentation were performed. From the lidar measurements, particle backscatter coefficients at up to eight wavelengths between 320 and 1064 nm and particle extinction coefficients at 2-3 wavelengths between 292 and 532 nm were determined. Thus, for the first time, an extensive set of optical particle properties from several lidar platforms was available for the inversion into particle microphysical quantities. For this purpose, two different inversion algorithms were used, which provide particle effective radius, volume, surface-area, and number concentrations, and complex refractive index. The single-scattering albedo follows from Mie-scattering calculations. The parameters were compared to the ones from airborne measurements of particle size distributions and absorption coefficients. Two measurement cases were selected. During the night of 9-10 August 1998 measurements were taken in a biomass-burning aerosol layer in the free troposphere, which was characterized by a particle optical depth of about 0.1 at 550 nm. Excellent agreement between remote-sensing and in situ measurements was found. In the center of this plume the effective radius was approximately 0.25 mum, and all methods showed rather high complex refractive indices, ranging from 1.56-1.66 in real part and from 0.05-0.07i in imaginary part. The single-scattering albedo showed low values from 0.78-0.83 at 532 nm. The second case, taken on 11 August 1998, presents the typical conditions of a polluted boundary layer in central Europe. Optical depth was 0.35 at 550 nm, and particle effective radii were 0.1-0.2 mum. In contrast to the first case, imaginary parts of the refractive index were below 0.03i. Accordingly, the single-scattering albedo ranged from 0.87-0.95.Peer reviewe

Glycosaminoglycans: major biological players

International audienc