Editor's Note Bariatric surgery along with 2 years of low-level lifestyle interventions resulted in more type 2 diabetes remissions than lifestyle interventions alone at 3-years followup, this study finds. Participants were randomized to either intensive lifestyle weight loss interventions for 1 year followed by low-level lifestyle interventions for 2 years…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in partnership with the National Library of Medicine on October 19 announced the launch of three new features on AccessGUDID, the public portal to data submitted to the FDA’s Global Unique Device Identification Database (GUDID). Two new APIs (application program interface) and…

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Editor's Note The US News & World Report has released its 2015-2016 Most Connected Hospitals list. Included are 159 hospitals in 37 states that have made significant strides in implementing technologies to enhance the digital exchange of information. Ohio has the most hospitals on the list at 23, followed by…

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Editor's Note Some 120,000 more patients would get surgical site infections (SSIs) and 6,300 more would die from those infections if antibiotics given before surgery become 30% less effective, this study finds. Researchers estimated that between 38.7% and 50.9% of pathogens causing SSIs in the US are resistant to standard…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration on October 15 issued a safety alert that heater-cooler devices have been associated with Nontuberculous Mycobacteria infections, primarily in patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgical procedures. Devices include: oxygenator heat exchangers cardioplegia heat exchangers warming/cooling blankets. Between January 2010 and August 2015, the FDA received…

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Editor's Note Medicaid patients had a twofold higher risk of surgical site infections (SSIs) after cesarean delivery than privately insured patients, this study finds. The higher risk remained even after adjusting for demographic and clinical variables. Medicaid might represent factors the study did not account for, such as socioeconomic status…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare on October 15 released Oro 2.0, an online high reliability assessment and resource library to help hospital leaders determine their organizations’ level of high reliability maturity. The assessment process guides users through a series of questions that allows for discussion and…

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Editor's Note In this study, more case-relevant communication among surgical team members during a procedure was associated with fewer organ/space surgical site infections (SSIs). More case-irrelevant communication during the closing phase of the procedure was linked to an increased incidence of incisional SSIs. Distractions were not associated with SSIs. Case-irrelevant…

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Editor's Note Patient factors explain a large proportion of hospital variation in postoperative patient-reported outcomes, underscoring the importance of risk adjustment, this study finds. Some variation across hospitals remained unexplained, however, suggesting that patient-reported outcomes may be a viable indicator of hospital performance, the authors conclude. There is a growing…

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Editor's Note Researchers found significant differences in the odds of 30-day readmissions after total hip arthroplasties on the basis of race, socioeconomic status, and payer. African American and Hispanic patients had a higher risk of readmissions than white patients. Lower socioeconomic status was linked to higher odds of readmission. Medicare…

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