Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on September 6 classified the recall of the Roadrunner UniGlide Hydrophilic Wire Guides by Cook Medical (Bloomington, Indiana) as Class I, the most serious. All serial and lot numbers are being recalled, and the product line is being discontinued because of concern…
Editor's Note A human centered design approach to OR-to-ICU patient handoffs led to improvements in the patient handover process in this study. Researchers uncovered technical and communication flaws when receiving postoperative patients at the Durham, North Carolina, Veterans Affairs Medical Center surgical ICU. The handoff process was redesigned to address…
Editor's Note The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has updated its “Preventing hospital-associated venous thromboembolism [VTE]: A guide for effective quality improvement.” The guidelines were originally published in 2008. The update includes: new and improved metrics for tracking the adequacy of VTE prophylaxis good and bad aspects of…
Editor's Note Nearly 5,000 Minnesota nurses are on strike after contract talks broke down, the September 5 Modern Healthcare reports. The walkout at five Minneapolis-St Paul hospitals began Monday, September 5, at 7 am. The main issues of the negotiations include health insurance, workplace safety, and staffing. Allina Health says it…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on September 2 issued a final rule saying that over-the-counter (OTC) antiseptic wash products containing active ingredients can no longer be marketed. The rule applies to products containing one or more of 19 ingredients, including the most commonly used triclosan and triclocarban.…
Editor's Note The nation’s top performing states for healthcare quality according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s updated State Snapshots are: Main Massachusetts Wisconsin New Hampshire Minnesota. State Snapshots is an interactive online resource that provides data on how each state and the District of Columbia perform on…
Editor's Note This study found a strong association between spinal anesthesia and lower 30-day mortality along with a shorter length of stay after total hip and knee replacements. Of 10,868 patients analyzed, 8,553 had spinal anesthesia and 2,315 had general anesthesia. The 30-day mortality rate was 0.19% in the spinal…
Editor's Note Analyzing data on nearly 4,500 acute-care facilities, Johns Hopkins researchers found that the hospitals with the highest rates of readmissions were more likely to show better mortality scores. Data on mortality and hospital readmissions used by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) sometime fail to tell…
Editor's Note Children who played games on an Apple iPad before surgery had a reduction in their stress levels equal to the effect of taking a sedative, according to a study presented at the World Congress of Anaesthesiologists in Hong Kong. In addition, parental satisfaction and quality of anesthesia induction…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on September 1 issued a Safety Alert for Baxter International’s (Deerfield, Illinois) Vascu-Guard Peripheral Vascular Patch. The FDA has received multiple adverse event reports associated with use of the Vascu-Guard patch during carotid endarterectomy, including intraoperative or postoperative bleeding and hematomas as…
