Fracture Risk in Men With Congestive Heart Failure Risk Reduction With Spironolactone

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to determine whether spironolactone use is associated with fractures in men with congestive heart failure (CHF).BackgroundIn rats with aldosteronism, spironolactone preserves skeletal strength. However, in humans, the relationship of spironolactone to fractures is not known.MethodsThe medical records of all male patients with CHF from 1999 to 2005 treated at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Memphis, Tennessee, were reviewed (n = 4,735). Odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals of having a fracture associated with spironolactone use were estimated using conditional logistic regression.ResultsWe identified 167 cases with a single-incident fracture and matched these by age and race to 668 control subjects without fractures. After adjustment for covariates, spironolactone use was inversely associated with total fracture (odds ratio: 0.575; 95% confidence interval: 0.346 to 0.955, p = 0.0324).ConclusionsThe use of spironolactone is inversely associated with fractures in men with CHF

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Pediatric Vital Sign Distribution Derived From a Multi-Centered Emergency Department Database

BackgroundWe hypothesized that current vital sign thresholds used in pediatric emergency department (ED) screening tools do not reflect observed vital signs in this population. We analyzed a large multi-centered database to develop heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate centile rankings and z-scores that could be incorporated into electronic health record ED screening tools and we compared our derived centiles to previously published centiles and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) vital sign thresholds.MethodsInitial HR and respiratory rate data entered into the Cerner™ electronic health record at 169 participating hospitals’ ED over 5 years (2009 through 2013) as part of routine care were analyzed. Analysis was restricted to non-admitted children (0 to <18 years). Centile curves and z-scores were developed using generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape. A split-sample validation using two-thirds of the sample was compared with the remaining one-third. Centile values were compared with results from previous studies and guidelines.ResultsHR and RR centiles and z-scores were determined from ~1.2 million records. Empirical 95th centiles for HR and respiratory rate were higher than previously published results and both deviated from PALS guideline recommendations.ConclusionHeart and respiratory rate centiles derived from a large real-world non-hospitalized ED pediatric population can inform the modification of electronic and paper-based screening tools to stratify children by the degree of deviation from normal for age rather than dichotomizing children into groups having “normal” versus “abnormal” vital signs. Furthermore, these centiles also may be useful in paper-based screening tools and bedside alarm limits for children in areas other than the ED and may establish improved alarm limits for bedside monitors

Age‐based centiles for diastolic blood pressure among children in the out‐of‐hospital emergency setting

Abstract Objective To compare Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) diastolic blood pressure (DBP) criteria to empirically derived DBP criteria for the prediction of out‐of‐hospital interventions in children. Methods We performed a retrospective study of pediatric (90th centile). The accuracy of low DBP for out‐of‐hospital interventions between the two criteria was similar. Conclusion PALS criteria for DBP classified a high proportion of children as having abnormal vital signs, particularly with diastolic hypertension. Empirically derived DBP thresholds more accurately predict the delivery of key out‐of‐hospital interventions. If externally validated, correlated to in‐hospital outcomes, and combined with thresholds for other vital signs, these may better predict the need for out‐of‐hospital interventions

Data_Sheet_1.xlsx

Background<p>We hypothesized that current vital sign thresholds used in pediatric emergency department (ED) screening tools do not reflect observed vital signs in this population. We analyzed a large multi-centered database to develop heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate centile rankings and z-scores that could be incorporated into electronic health record ED screening tools and we compared our derived centiles to previously published centiles and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) vital sign thresholds.</p>Methods<p>Initial HR and respiratory rate data entered into the Cerner™ electronic health record at 169 participating hospitals’ ED over 5 years (2009 through 2013) as part of routine care were analyzed. Analysis was restricted to non-admitted children (0 to <18 years). Centile curves and z-scores were developed using generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape. A split-sample validation using two-thirds of the sample was compared with the remaining one-third. Centile values were compared with results from previous studies and guidelines.</p>Results<p>HR and RR centiles and z-scores were determined from ~1.2 million records. Empirical 95th centiles for HR and respiratory rate were higher than previously published results and both deviated from PALS guideline recommendations.</p>Conclusion<p>Heart and respiratory rate centiles derived from a large real-world non-hospitalized ED pediatric population can inform the modification of electronic and paper-based screening tools to stratify children by the degree of deviation from normal for age rather than dichotomizing children into groups having “normal” versus “abnormal” vital signs. Furthermore, these centiles also may be useful in paper-based screening tools and bedside alarm limits for children in areas other than the ED and may establish improved alarm limits for bedside monitors.</p

Data_Sheet_2.docx

Background<p>We hypothesized that current vital sign thresholds used in pediatric emergency department (ED) screening tools do not reflect observed vital signs in this population. We analyzed a large multi-centered database to develop heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate centile rankings and z-scores that could be incorporated into electronic health record ED screening tools and we compared our derived centiles to previously published centiles and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) vital sign thresholds.</p>Methods<p>Initial HR and respiratory rate data entered into the Cerner™ electronic health record at 169 participating hospitals’ ED over 5 years (2009 through 2013) as part of routine care were analyzed. Analysis was restricted to non-admitted children (0 to <18 years). Centile curves and z-scores were developed using generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape. A split-sample validation using two-thirds of the sample was compared with the remaining one-third. Centile values were compared with results from previous studies and guidelines.</p>Results<p>HR and RR centiles and z-scores were determined from ~1.2 million records. Empirical 95th centiles for HR and respiratory rate were higher than previously published results and both deviated from PALS guideline recommendations.</p>Conclusion<p>Heart and respiratory rate centiles derived from a large real-world non-hospitalized ED pediatric population can inform the modification of electronic and paper-based screening tools to stratify children by the degree of deviation from normal for age rather than dichotomizing children into groups having “normal” versus “abnormal” vital signs. Furthermore, these centiles also may be useful in paper-based screening tools and bedside alarm limits for children in areas other than the ED and may establish improved alarm limits for bedside monitors.</p

Data_Sheet_6.xlsx

Background<p>We hypothesized that current vital sign thresholds used in pediatric emergency department (ED) screening tools do not reflect observed vital signs in this population. We analyzed a large multi-centered database to develop heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate centile rankings and z-scores that could be incorporated into electronic health record ED screening tools and we compared our derived centiles to previously published centiles and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) vital sign thresholds.</p>Methods<p>Initial HR and respiratory rate data entered into the Cerner™ electronic health record at 169 participating hospitals’ ED over 5 years (2009 through 2013) as part of routine care were analyzed. Analysis was restricted to non-admitted children (0 to <18 years). Centile curves and z-scores were developed using generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape. A split-sample validation using two-thirds of the sample was compared with the remaining one-third. Centile values were compared with results from previous studies and guidelines.</p>Results<p>HR and RR centiles and z-scores were determined from ~1.2 million records. Empirical 95th centiles for HR and respiratory rate were higher than previously published results and both deviated from PALS guideline recommendations.</p>Conclusion<p>Heart and respiratory rate centiles derived from a large real-world non-hospitalized ED pediatric population can inform the modification of electronic and paper-based screening tools to stratify children by the degree of deviation from normal for age rather than dichotomizing children into groups having “normal” versus “abnormal” vital signs. Furthermore, these centiles also may be useful in paper-based screening tools and bedside alarm limits for children in areas other than the ED and may establish improved alarm limits for bedside monitors.</p

Data_Sheet_7.xlsx

Background<p>We hypothesized that current vital sign thresholds used in pediatric emergency department (ED) screening tools do not reflect observed vital signs in this population. We analyzed a large multi-centered database to develop heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate centile rankings and z-scores that could be incorporated into electronic health record ED screening tools and we compared our derived centiles to previously published centiles and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) vital sign thresholds.</p>Methods<p>Initial HR and respiratory rate data entered into the Cerner™ electronic health record at 169 participating hospitals’ ED over 5 years (2009 through 2013) as part of routine care were analyzed. Analysis was restricted to non-admitted children (0 to <18 years). Centile curves and z-scores were developed using generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape. A split-sample validation using two-thirds of the sample was compared with the remaining one-third. Centile values were compared with results from previous studies and guidelines.</p>Results<p>HR and RR centiles and z-scores were determined from ~1.2 million records. Empirical 95th centiles for HR and respiratory rate were higher than previously published results and both deviated from PALS guideline recommendations.</p>Conclusion<p>Heart and respiratory rate centiles derived from a large real-world non-hospitalized ED pediatric population can inform the modification of electronic and paper-based screening tools to stratify children by the degree of deviation from normal for age rather than dichotomizing children into groups having “normal” versus “abnormal” vital signs. Furthermore, these centiles also may be useful in paper-based screening tools and bedside alarm limits for children in areas other than the ED and may establish improved alarm limits for bedside monitors.</p

Clinical Risk Factors For Central Line Associated Venous Thrombosis (CLAVT) In Children

ABSTRACTBackground: Identifying risk factors related to Central Venous Line (CVL) placement could potentially minimize Central Line-Associated Venous Thrombosis (CLAVT). We sought to identify the clinical factors associated with CLAVT in children. Methods: Over a 3-year period, 3,733 CVLs were placed at a tertiary-care children’s hospital. Data were extracted from the electronic medical records of patients with clinical signs and symptoms of venous thromboembolism (VTE), diagnosed using Doppler ultrasonography and/or echocardiography. Statistical analyses examined differences in CLAVT occurrence between groups based on patient and CVL characteristics (type, brand, placement site, and hospital unit). Results: Femoral CVL placement was associated with greater risk for developing CLAVT (OR 11.1, 95% CI 3.9-31.6, p<0.0001). CVLs placed in the NICU were also associated with increased CLAVT occurrence (OR 5.3, 95% CI 2.1-13.2, p=0.0003). CVL brand was also significantly associated with risk of CLAVT events. Conclusion: Retrospective analyses identified femoral CVL placement and catheter type as independent risk factors for CLAVT, suggesting increased risks due to mechanical reasons. Placement of CVLs in the NICU also led to an increased risk of CLAVT, suggesting that small infants are at increased risk of thrombotic events. Alternative strategies for CVL placement, thromboprophylaxis, and earlier diagnosis may be important for reducing CLAVT events