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Full-Text Articles in Clinical Epidemiology
Clinical Consequences And Determinants Of False Positive Blood Cultures In Adult Hospitalized Patients, Sidra Liaquat
Clinical Consequences And Determinants Of False Positive Blood Cultures In Adult Hospitalized Patients, Sidra Liaquat
Theses & Dissertations
Blood cultures are the gold standard for detecting blood stream infections. However, in the US, 0.6-6% of all blood cultures get contaminated leading to adverse clinical outcomes such as unnecessarily prolonged hospital stay and antibiotic therapy. Using electronic medical records, we explored the clinical outcomes and patient-specific risk factors of contaminated blood cultures in an era where rapid blood culture testing was being utilized to provide blood culture results within hours. Rapid blood culture test results can help clinicians in early and more effective management of patients with contaminated blood cultures, thus improving clinical outcomes. We also studied the impact …
Surveillance, Prevention And Surgical Treatments For Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Kerui Xu
Surveillance, Prevention And Surgical Treatments For Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Kerui Xu
Theses & Dissertations
Liver cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death, representing roughly 9.1% of all cancer mortality. Of all primary cancers of the liver, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for roughly 85%. HCC has been increasing in the U.S. and other countries. In particular, HCC places a huge burden on the Chinese population, as China alone consists of approximately 50% of the total HCC cases and deaths. In China, chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is the leading cause for developing HCC. The two challenges in prevention and control of HCC experienced in China are low rates of HCC screening among the …
Modifiable Barriers To Optimal Outcomes In Gout Management, Brian W. Coburn
Modifiable Barriers To Optimal Outcomes In Gout Management, Brian W. Coburn
Theses & Dissertations
Improving patient outcomes in chronic disease is of critical importance to the future of health care. Gout, affecting 4% of the US population, is a highly treatable chronic disease from which patients experience unnecessarily suboptimal outcomes. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how interrelated patient and provider factors affect patient outcomes in gout. First, I describe how only 14% of gout patients know their serum urate (SU) goal for urate lowering therapy (ULT) despite otherwise being knowledgeable about gout and its treatment. I then demonstrate the importance of multiple patient and provider factors in achieving SU goal. Specifically, I demonstrate that …