28 research outputs found
Predicting in-hospital mortality and unanticipated admissions to the intensive care unit using routinely collected blood tests and vital signs: development and validation of a multivariable model.
AIM: The National Early Warning System (NEWS) is based on vital signs; the Laboratory Decision Tree Early Warning Score (LDT-EWS) on laboratory test results. We aimed to develop and validate a new EWS (the LDTEWS:NEWS risk index) by combining the two and evaluating the discrimination of the primary outcome of unanticipated intensive care unit (ICU) admission or in-hospital mortality, within 24 hours. METHODS: We studied emergency medical admissions, aged 16 years or over, admitted to Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) and Portsmouth Hospitals (PH). Each admission had vital signs and laboratory tests measured within their hospital stay. We combined LDT-EWS and NEWS values using a linear time-decay weighting function imposed on the most recent blood tests. The LDTEWS:NEWS risk index was developed using data from 5 years of admissions to PH, and validated on a year of data from both PH and OUH. We tested the risk index's ability to discriminate the primary outcome using the c-statistic. RESULTS: The development cohort contained 97,933 admissions (median age = 73 years) of which 4,723 (4.8%) resulted in in-hospital death and 1,078 (1.1%) in unanticipated ICU admission. We validated the risk index using data from PH (n = 21,028) and OUH (n = 16,383). The risk index showed a higher discrimination in the validation sets (c-statistic value (95% CI)) (PH, 0.901 (0.898-0.905); OUH, 0.916 (0.911-0.921)), than NEWS alone (PH, 0.877 (0.873-0.882); OUH, 0.898 (0.893-0.904)). CONCLUSIONS: The LDTEWS:NEWS risk index increases the ability to identify patients at risk of deterioration, compared to NEWS alone
Growth of (110) Diamond using pure Dicarbon
We use a density-functional based tight-binding method to study diamond
growth steps by depositing dicarbon species onto a hydrogen-free diamond (110)
surface. Subsequent C_2 molecules are deposited on an initially clean surface,
in the vicinity of a growing adsorbate cluster, and finally, near vacancies
just before completion of a full new monolayer. The preferred growth stages
arise from C_2n clusters in near ideal lattice positions forming zigzag chains
running along the [-110] direction parallel to the surface. The adsorption
energies are consistently exothermic by 8--10 eV per C_2, depending on the size
of the cluster. The deposition barriers for these processes are in the range of
0.0--0.6 eV. For deposition sites above C_2n clusters the adsorption energies
are smaller by 3 eV, but diffusion to more stable positions is feasible. We
also perform simulations of the diffusion of C_2 molecules on the surface in
the vicinity of existing adsorbate clusters using an augmented Lagrangian
penalty method. We find migration barriers in excess of 3 eV on the clean
surface, and 0.6--1.0 eV on top of graphene-like adsorbates. The barrier
heights and pathways indicate that the growth from gaseous dicarbons proceeds
either by direct adsorption onto clean sites or after migration on top of the
existing C_2n chains.Comment: 8 Pages, 7 figure
Influences de la sylviculture sur le risque de dégâts biotiques et abiotiques dans les peuplements forestiers
Limitations in the ability of NB84 to detect metastatic neuroblastoma cells in bone marrow
The validity of quality assessment instruments in nursing Final report to Department of Health
SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:q97/12207 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo