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Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care / 05.06.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Tom Gaither, MD, MAS Department of Urology San Francisco, CA 94143 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Admission to the hospital because of bicycle crashes has increased over the past 15 years. We aimed to estimate the costs due to these bicycle crashes. From 1999 to 2013, the total costs due to these injuries (direct medical costs, work loss costs, and pain and suffering) were $209 billion dollars. Costs due to non-fatal injuries have increased by 137% over the study period. In 2013, the total direct and indirect costs were $24 billion dollars, which is approximately doubling the costs due to occupational injuries in the US. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Pediatrics / 04.06.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gary Smith, MD, DrPH Director, Center for Injury Research and Policy Nationwide Children’s Hospital Columbus, OH MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Lawn mowers continue to be an important source of serious pediatric morbidity in the United States (US) with initial treatment of pediatric lawn mower-related injuries costing about $90 million annually. The long-term physical, psychological, and financial effects of these traumatic injuries can be devastating for those injured and for their families. This study comprehensively analyzes data over a 25-year period using a nationally representative database to evaluate the epidemiologic characteristics, including mechanism of injury, of lawn mower-related injuries to children in the US. It also provides a discussion of relevant injury prevention strategies. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Emergency Care / 28.05.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gary Smith, MD, DrPH Director, Center for Injury Research and Policy Nationwide Children’s Hospital Columbus, OH MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Golf is enjoyed worldwide as a leisure activity and competitive sport. While golf is viewed as a low-risk sport, acute traumatic and overuse injuries do occur. Previous studies have generally focused on the clinical aspects of golf-related injuries. Few studies examine injuries that occurred during practice at home or school, or due to conditions or hazards on a golf course. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, JAMA, Surgical Research / 17.05.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alan Cook, MD, FACS Director, Trauma Research Program Chandler Regional Medical Center Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix Chandler, AZ 85224 and Frederick B. Rogers MD, MS, FACS Trauma Surgeon Lancaster General Health/Penn Medicine Adjunct Professor of Surgery University of Pennsylvania College of Medicine Department of Surgery MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The morbidity and mortality from pulmonary emboli (PE) are considerable. They range in severity from a problem amenable to outpatient medical management to fatal. Trauma patients are often ineligible for chemoprophylaxis due to the risk for life-threatening bleeding. Yet traumatic injury can increase a person’s likelihood of having a pulmonary embolus via an array of mechanical and humoral pathways. The vena cava filter (VCF) offered the possibility of PE prophylaxis for patients otherwise vulnerable to PE risk. Use of VCF grew and the rate of use increased even more after the introduction of the retrievable VCF. Our study sought to determine if any temporal variation in VCF use has occurred and investigate if an contemporaneous change in the diagnosis of PE has taken place. We used three databases to allow a telescoping window of observation from a single state, Pennsylvania (PTOS), to a convenience of sample of trauma centers across the country (NTDB), and finally a national, population-based sample of all hospital discharges in the US (NIS). A temporal trend was observed in all three datasets with differing magnitudes and time points of change. The variation of vena cava filter use was most pronounced in the PTOS and least dramatic in the NIS, The rate of PE was essentially unchanged during the same period. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Pediatrics / 10.05.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Kris Jatana, MD FAAP Pediatric Otolaryngologist Nationwide Children’s Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: This study looked at a 21-year period – 1990 through 2010 – and focused on children younger than 18 years of age treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments for cotton tip applicator-related ear injuries. About 263,000 children were injured during the study period, which comes out to approximately 1000 injuries seen in emergency departments every month or 34 per day. The majority of injuries occurred when cotton tip applicators were used to clean a child’s ear canal (73%), and most of those injuries occurred when a child was using a cotton tip applicator on their own (77%), or their parent was using the device (16%) to clean the ear canal. About two out of every three patients were younger than 8 years of age, and patients aged 0-3 years accounted for 40% of all injuries. Surprisingly, the highest rate of injury was in children 0-3 years old. The most common injuries were foreign body sensation (30%), perforated ear drum (25%) and soft tissue injury (23%). (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Pediatrics / 09.05.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Monika Goyal, M.D., M.S.C.E. Assistant Professor of Pediatrics & Emergency Medicine Director of Research, Division of Emergency Medicine and Attending Physician Children’s National Health System The George Washington University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: As pediatric emergency clinicians, unfortunately, many of us have cared for a number of children who have been victims of gun violence. We wanted to investigate whether gun laws may make a difference in the rates of firearm-related morbidity and mortality in children. We specifically were interested in emergency department visits because they relate directly to the care we provide to pediatric patients. Our main findings from our five-year study were that children are affected by gun violence nationally and, specifically, we saw regional differences in emergency department visits made by children who were victims of firearm violence. Overall, firearm-related visits by patients 21 and younger to emergency departments remained consistent over time at a rate of 65 per every 100,000 visits until 2013, when they decreased slightly to 51 per 100,000 visits. We also found that regions with more strict gun laws had lower rates of emergency department visits by children for gun violence compared with those regions with less stringent laws. We used the Brady Score, which looks at various state gun laws and assigns a score, to measure strictness. Then, based on state-level scores, we created regional composite scores. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, JAMA, Mental Health Research, Surgical Research / 30.04.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Elinore J. Kaufman, MD, MSHP Department of Surgery, New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medicine New York, New York MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Deaths of civilians in contact with police have recently gained national public and policy attention. However, we know very little about nonfatal injuries, which far outnumber deaths. MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report? Response: Nonfatal injuries are much more pervasive than law enforcement-associated deaths, and rates have remained stable over several years, at approximately 51,000 emergency department visits and hospitalizations each year. These injuries primarily affect young men, and mental illness is a common theme. As a physician, my goal is always to get to zero preventable injuries. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews / 21.04.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Julia Wolfson, PhD MPP Assistant Professor Department of Health Management and Policy University of Michigan School of Public Health Ann Arbor, MI 48109 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Gun violence is a serious public health problem that in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, was responsible for more than 36,000 deaths. High profile shootings in public places such as schools, nightclubs and airports have focused national attention on the threat of gun violence in public places. Many states have recently passed new laws that expand the public places where people can legally carry guns either openly or concealed on their person. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, JAMA, Karolinski Institute, Mental Health Research / 06.04.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Hanna Sahlin MSc, Lic psychologist, Lic psychotherapist Specialist in clinical psychology PhD-student Departement of Clinical Neuroscience Karolinska Institutet National Self-harm project Centre for Psychiatry Research, CPF Stockholm, Sweden What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: This study is the result of wanting to find a more conclusive answer to whether individuals who engage in non-fatal deliberate self-harm are more prone to aggression towards others. There has long been a debate on whether aggression to oneself and aggression towards others co-occur, but the studies that have been conducted thus far have been on smaller samples or with clinical or forensic cohorts. Also, the studies have had great variability regarding the definition of both “deliberate self-harm” and “violence”. Thus, it has been difficult to establish an ”overall” effect size for this association, or to draw firmer conclusions on how and if this association plays out in the general population. We had the opportunity to study this association in several large nationwide population-based registries including all Swedish citizens, and with high specificity regarding the ingoing variables of interest – i.e., non-fatal deliberate self-harm (as registered in the National Patient Register) and violent crime convictions (as registered in the National Crime Register). We found a five times increased crude risk (hazard) of being convicted of a violent crime if one had received self-harm associated clinical care, and vice-versa, that there was an equally increased risk of self-harm if one had been convicted of a violent crime. After controlling for relevant psychiatric comorbidities and socio-economic status, an almost doubled risk of violent crime conviction remained among self-harming men and women compared to individuals not exposed to self-harm. It is important to notice that our study did not find any evidence suggesting that self-harm behaviours cause violent criminality. Therefore, we conclude that the engagement in violence towards oneself and towards others share an underlying vulnerability to impulsive and aggressive behaviours. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care / 23.03.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sarabeth Spitzer MD Candidate | MS2 Stanford University School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: While firearm homicides make headlines, they cause many more injuries than deaths.[1] No one had performed any recent analysis on the costs of hospitalizations for firearm-related injuries. Stanford is a Level One trauma center, and we care for patients injured by firearms. We wanted to know how much it costs the health system to treat these patients. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Autism, Columbia / 22.03.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joseph Guan MPH Candidate in Epidemiology, Certificate in Chronic Diseases Epidemiology Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The prevalence of autism has been increasing especially in the past two decades. With an estimate of more than 3.5 million people living with autism in the US, approximately 500,000 of them are children under 15 years old. Current studies show that males are approximately four times as likely than females to be diagnosed with autism. There is also evidence that people with autism are at a heightened risk of injury. However, the research on the relationship between autism and injury is understudied. We found that 28% of deaths in individuals with autism were due to injury, compared to 7% of deaths in the general population. Injury deaths in individuals with autism occurred at a much younger age (29.1 years) on average compared to injury deaths in the general population (54.7 years). Our study show that drowning was the leading cause of injury death among individuals with autism, followed by suffocation and asphyxiation. Children under the age of 15 years were 160 times more likely to die from drowning. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Social Issues, University of Pittsburgh / 21.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Christian D. Pulcini, MD, MEd, MPH Pediatric Resident Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC Chair, Section on Pediatric Trainees (SOPT) American Academy of Pediatrics MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Poverty influences the well-being of children and adolescents in a negative way. Poor children are often exposed to toxic health stressors, including violence, environmental toxins, and inadequate nutrition. Children in poverty with chronic health conditions also are more likely to have higher rates of secondary disorders and worse outcomes. We studied children with asthma, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), to describe the how much disease and if the children had multiple (comorbid) conditons and how these vary by poverty status. Parents reported through the National Survey of Children's Health that asthma and ADHD rose 18% and 44% from 2003-2011/2012, respectively, whereas the lifetime prevalence of ASD rose 32% from 2007-2011/2012 in all income levels. For asthma, the rise was most among the poor at 25.8%. For ADHD, the percent change among the poor was similar, however the rise in autism spectrum disorder was associated with being non-poor. Publicly insured children with asthma, ADHD, and ASD also had a significant higher chance (1.9×, 1.6×, 3.0×, respectively) of having higher more than one chronic condition. In addition, kids who were poor with asthma and ADHD. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Gender Differences / 20.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD Professor Emerita & Special Lecturer Department of Health Policy & Management Mailman School of Public Health Columbia University York NY 10032 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We examined the experiences of 1285 American women, military and civilian, who served in Vietnam during the war and responded to a mail survey conducted approximately 25 years later in which they were asked to report and reflect upon their experiences and social and health histories. The data were collected as part of a much larger study that centered about methodological approaches to studying health effects of the military herbicides used in Vietnam. To our knowledge, this is the first study (a) to describe the experiences of civilian women deployed to a war zone and to compare them to those of military women; (b) to differentiate the experiences and outcomes among military women by the length of their military career service; (c) to contextualize the general health and happiness, marital characteristics, and childbearing patterns of women deployed to Vietnam and those of their peers by comparing them to a contemporaneous nationally representative age-matched cohort, the General Social Survey (GSS). Overall, this paper provides insight into the experiences of the understudied women who served in Vietnam, and sheds light on subgroup differences within the sample. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Alcohol, Author Interviews, Pediatrics / 14.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Scott E. Hadland, MD, MPH, MS Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Boston University School of Medicine Urban Health & Advocacy Track Director | Boston Combined Residency Program Boston, MA 02118 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Studies to date have shown that states’ alcohol laws can help prevent young people from dying in car crashes. However, studies to date have usually only looked at a single policy at once. We wanted to build on these previous studies by looking at the overall effect of multiple alcohol laws acting at once. We also wanted to look at laws not necessarily only targeting drinking and driving among young people, but also policies aimed primarily at adults over 21. We studied deaths of young people under 21 who were killed in motor vehicle crashes across the United States between 2000 and 2013. We found that one-quarter of all young people died in a crash involving a driver who alcohol level was over the legal limit. One-half died in a crash in which the driver had any level of alcohol in their bloodstream above zero. We also found that most young people died on evenings and weekends, which is when people are most likely to have been drinking. Importantly, almost half of all young people died in a crash in which they were the passenger, not the driver. In 80% of cases in which they were the passenger, it was actually an adult >21, not a young person, who was driving the vehicle. We then looked at states’ alcohol laws, and found that the stronger the set of alcohol policies in a state, the lower the likelihood of young people dying in a crash that was alcohol-related. Policies included laws relating to alcohol taxes, alcohol availability and hours of sales, and graduated driver’s licensing for young people, among many others. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews / 13.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Robert Adelman PhD Associate professor of sociology University at Albany, SUNY  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Our study examines Census and FBI data across four decades from 1970 to 2010. We analyze data for 200 randomly selected U.S. metropolitan areas. Our results show strong and stable evidence that for murder, robbery, burglary, and larceny as immigration increases, on average, in American metropolitan areas, crime decreases. We find no impact of immigration on aggravated assault. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Brain Injury / 08.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Julianne Schmidt, PhD, ATC Assistant Professor Department of Kinesiology The University of Georgia Athens GA MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Less than half of all people with a concussion intend to reduce their driving at any point. Current recommendations surrounding concussion focus on when it is safe to return to sport or return to the classroom, but return to driving is usually ignored and has not been studied. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Annals Internal Medicine, Author Interviews / 01.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joan A. Reid, Ph.D., LMHC Assistant Professor Criminology Program DAV 266 University of South Florida St. Petersburg MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Firearm-associated homicide and suicide are leading causes of death among American youth (i.e., 10-24 years old), with disproportionately high rates observed among male youth of color. Notably, gun violence and psychological problems are often conflated in public discourse regarding gun violence and prevention. However, few studies have assessed the impact of exposure to violence, either as a witness or a victim, when exploring the association between gun-carrying behavior and psychological distress. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Addiction, Author Interviews, NIH, Opiods, Race/Ethnic Diversity / 27.01.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Meredith S Shiels Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics National Cancer Institute Bethesda, MD MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: In most high-income countries, premature death rates have been declining, due to the overwhelming successes of public health efforts to prevent and treat chronic disease. The US is a major outlier, where death rates overall have plateaued, or even increased, as reported recently by our sister agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of particular concern are recent reports of increasing death rates among Americans during mid-life. To expand upon prior findings, we focused on premature death, which we defined as death occurring between the ages of 25 and 64. We examined finely detailed death certificate data for the entire U.S. population and described changes in death rates during 1999-2014 by cause of death, sex, race, ethnicity, and geography. To provide context to our findings, we compared trends in death rates in the U.S. to England and Wales and Canada. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania / 12.01.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Daniel Romer, PhD Annenberg Public Policy Center University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We have been studying trends in health compromising behaviors in popular films that were released since 1950, and in 2013 we reported that films rated PG-13 had just passed the rate of portrayed gun violence shown in popular R-rated films in 2012. In this report, we updated the trends in gun violence through 2015 and found that the trend has continued. In addition, we noted the strong contribution to this trend of films with comic book heroes whose heavy use of guns omits the harmful and otherwise realistic consequences of blood and suffering. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews / 06.01.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Emma E. McGinty, PhD, MS Center for Injury Research and Policy and Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy Research, Department of Health Policy and Management Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Baltimore MD 21205 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: All states in the US have some kind of ignition interlock lock, but until this study we didn’t know whether these laws meet their intended goal – to reduce alcohol-involved fatal crashes. Specifically, we lacked evidence on the effectiveness of two different types of interlock laws – mandatory interlock laws, which require all individuals convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol to install an interlock, and partial interlock laws, which require some segments of high-risk DUI offenders – like repeat offenders or those convicted of driving with a very high blood alcohol content – to use an interlock in order to drive legally. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, BMJ, Emergency Care, Pediatrics / 21.12.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Jamie G Cooper Consultant in Emergency Medicine Aberdeen Royal Infirmary Aberdeen UK MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Choking in children can be fatal and regularly grapes can be the cause.  We believe that public awareness of the choking hazard posed by grapes (and other similarly shaped foods, such as cherry tomatoes) is not wide spread.  By publishing this article we aimed to highlight the problem to health professionals who look after children and also to the public at large in an attempt to reduce the number of future episodes. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Anemia, Author Interviews, Hematology, Surgical Research, Technology / 05.12.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Allan Doctor, MD Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Professor of Pediatrics and (Associate) Biochemistry Washington University School of Medicine & Saint Louis Children’s Hospital St. Louis, Missouri MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Our research team has developed the first nanoscale artificial cells designed to emulate vital functions of natural red blood cells. If ultimately confirmed safe for use in humans, this nanotechnology-based product, called ‘ErythroMer’, could represent a new and innovative alternative to blood transfusions that would be especially valuable in situations where stored blood is needed, but difficult to obtain or use, such as in pre-hospital or battlefield settings. The artificial cells are designed to be freeze-dried, stored for extended periods at ambient temperatures, and simply reconstituted with water for immediate use. This year, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 30,000 civilian trauma deaths/year are preventable and of these, two-thirds arise from hemorrhage in the pre-hospital phase of care. One key goal for our team is to advance treatment for trauma victims or soldiers in austere environments by initiating resuscitation in the field, particularly when transport is prolonged. ErythroMer could be a blood substitute that medics carry in their pack and literally take it out, add water, and inject. There are currently no simple, practical means to bring transfusion to most trauma victims outside of hospitals. Delays in resuscitation significantly impact outcomes; it is our goal to push timely, effective care to field settings. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Heart Disease / 16.11.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Anand M. Irimpen MD Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine Tulane University Medical Center New Orleans, LA MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We did this study to look at the incidence of heart attacks post Katrina. There had been no long-term data on patients having heart attacks post major disaster and hence we decided to investigate this issue. The main findings are that there is a three-fold increase in heart attacks post Katrina compared to pre - Katrina. There was a higher incidence of hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia and smoking in the post-Katrina group compared to the pre-Katrina group. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, JAMA / 15.11.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ted Alcorn, MHS, MA Everytown for Gun Safety Brooklyn, New York MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Two decades ago, opponents of gun violence prevention recognized that they could curb the development and enactment of effective laws if they halted scientific research on which good policy would be grounded or justified. So they adopted a strategy of intimidation towards the leading federal agencies funding research on this topic and generating data on which analysis relied. Journalists that observed the pattern and scientists that lived through it often described the “chilling effect” this had on the field of gun violence prevention research. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, JAMA, Pediatrics / 15.11.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Katherine P. Theall, PhD Associate Professor Global Community Health and Behavioral Services Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine New Orleans, Louisiana MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: There are stark health disparities in the U.S. by socioeconomic position as well as between racial and ethnic groups. Many of these health disparities may have a root cause in childhood and be driven by social risk factors. The authors report each neighborhood stressor was associated with biological stress as measured by shortened telomere length and cortisol functioning. Many children are exposed to violence and a greater understanding of the effect on children’s health is critical because social environmental conditions likely contribute to health disparities. Socioeconomically disadvantaged communities have a higher exposure to violence. Limitations of the study include its lack of applicability to other demographic groups. The study also cannot establish causality. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, JAMA, Karolinski Institute, Mental Health Research / 01.11.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Zheng Chang PhD Dept. of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Karolinska Institutet and Seena Fazel MD Department of Psychiatry Warneford Hospital University of Oxford, Oxford, England MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: There were more than 10 million prisoners worldwide in 2015, with approximately 2.2 million in the United States alone. Despite reported decreases in violence in many countries, reoffending rates remain high. From 2005 through 2010, more than one-third of released prisoners in the United States and the United Kingdom were reconvicted of a new crime within 2 years. Most programs to reduce reoffending focus on psychosocial interventions, but their effect sizes are weak to moderate. As psychiatric and substance use disorders, which increase reoffending rates, are overrepresented among jail and prison populations. This study investigated the main psychotropic medication classes prescribed to prisoners using longitudinal Swedish population registers and examined the association between prescription of psychotropic medication and risk of violent reoffending. We found that three classes of psychotropic medications were associated with substantial reductions in violent reoffending: antipsychotics, a 42% reduction; psychostimulants, 38%; and drugs used in addictive disorders, a 52% reduction. The magnitudes of these associations were as strong as and possibly stronger than those for widely disseminated psychological programs in prison. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Clots - Coagulation, JAMA, Surgical Research, Thromboembolism / 03.10.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Charles A. Karcutskie IV, MD, MA Postdoctoral Research Fellow University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Department of Surgery Divisions of Trauma, Surgical Critical Care, and Burns MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Our research group at the Ryder Trauma Center have recently done several studies showing various differences in outcomes and risk based on mechanism of injury. Additionally, venous thromboembolism (VTE) is another topic that our group has focused on in the past several years. Because trauma patients are inherently at a higher risk for VTE due to the nature of their injury, we questioned whether the most important risk factors for VTE were different after blunt or penetrating trauma. At our institution, we assess VTE risk with the Greenfield Risk Assessment Profile, which is a list of several risk factors that each have weight toward an overall risk score. We took these risk factors and analyzed them individually based on mechanism of injury. We found that the factors that contribute to the VTE risk are different based on injury mechanism: After blunt trauma, transfusion status, neurologic status, and pelvic fracture contributed most. After penetrating trauma, vascular injury, severe abdominal injury, and age 40-59 years contributed most. This tells us that mechanism of injury may need to be incorporated into the risk assessment in order to discover the highest risk patients. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Education, Technology / 03.10.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Barak Ariel, PhD Jerry Lee Fellow in Experimental Criminology and Lecturer in Experimental Criminology University of Cambridge Alex Sutherland, D.Phil. RAND Europe MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The very first randomised-controlled experiment on cameras in Rialto (California) was originally intended to ‘cut red tape’, but Rialto Police Department decided instead to look at whether wearing the cameras could help reduce complaints and police use-of-force. That study found that cameras did cut use-of-force and complaints, with the latter almost to zero in the 12 months of the experiment. Given that each complaint costs, millions of dollars in the US, there was a lot of interest following that study, and that research was seen as crucial in the widespread adoption of Body-Worn Cameras in the US and other countries. Although Rialto is typical of a lot of mid-sized police forces in the US, it is just one location at one time – so the roll out that was taking place had a very weak evidence base. The same results might not be found in other locations and given that many police forces started to roll out cameras without evidence, there was a strong justification for replicating the study. This paper (and two others already published) report results from x10 RCTs that took place in the UK and US, with more than 2 million residents, over a period of a year. (more…)