Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to C C Roberts.
Carolyn Roberts, president and CEO of Copley Health Systems Inc., Morrisville, VT, is the new chairman-elect designate of the American Hospital Association. In an exclusive interview with Hospitals Editor Mary Grayson, she shares her perspectives on health care reform, restructuring the delivery system, and the role of trustees.
Intraesophageal pH recordings from 40 patients with abnormal studies who underwent fundoplication during a 1-year period were evaluated. Scores were recalculated for the first 12, 16, and 20 hours, respectively. Five of the recordings were for less than 24 hours, but were grossly abnormal and mathematically could not have normalized at 24 hours. The percentage of studies which were normal at 12, 16, and 20 hours were 20%, 15%, and 0%, respectively. One fifth of the patients would have been denied a fundoplication based on 12-hour results. In addition, 75 consecutive pH recordings were evaluated prospectively. Total scores were determined for the first 12, 16, and 20 hours with accuracies of 85%, 93%, and 92%, respectively. The sensitivity of 12-hour monitoring was only 78%. All abbreviated studies had a low rate of false positives; however, any false positives may be significant when used to determine the need for an operation. Abbreviated studies were associated with high false-negative rates (up to 52% for the 12-hour studies) for the calculated mean duration of sleep reflux, a parameter that has been found to be useful in identifying patients with respiratory symptoms secondary to gastroesophageal reflux. The use of abbreviated pH monitoring is discouraged.
Prolonged intraesophageal pH recording, an important test in the evaluation of children with suspected gastroesophageal reflux (GER) disease, may be performed and evaluated by markedly different methodologies. Twenty-four-hour intraesophageal pH recordings from 67 consecutive infants were evaluated by three scoring methods: early postprandial, late postprandial, and total recording. In addition, the scoring methods were evaluated for their ability to identify 20 infants with clinically defined GER-induced acute life-threatening events (ALTEs). There were significant positive correlations between each pair of scoring systems (early postprandial with late postprandial, early postprandial with total recording, and late postprandial with total recording). However, our data indicate that the three methods identify different groups of patients. The early and late postprandial methods disagreed in designating "normal" versus "abnormal" in approximately 20% of patients. The total recording method was more likely to label patients as normal than either of the other methods; it yielded normal results in approximately one half of patients abnormal by either the early or the late postprandial methods. Patients with GER-induced ALTEs were identified by the early postprandial method in 90% of cases, the late postprandial method in 95% of cases, and the total recording method in only 45% of cases. By applying three different scoring methods to the same 24-h intraesophageal pH recording, we demonstrated less-than-perfect correlation among the methods. Long-term follow-up is needed to determine if these differences are of clinical significance. We feel that effort should be directed toward standardizing the approach to intraesophageal pH monitoring in infants.
Carolyn C. Roberts--researcher, health care administrator, American Hospital Association board member--is a role model for women health care executives. As president of Copley Hospital in Morrisville, Vermont, Carolyn has provided national leadership on health care reform and the management of small and rural hospitals. Her creative and positive approach to life coupled with her sensitivity to serving patients and the community with quality service provides inspiration to many health administrators, physicians, and community leaders. The following interview is a tribute to a dear friend and a great lady.
Seventy-five consecutive 24-h intraesophageal pH recordings performed according to the methods of Jolley et al. were evaluated. Total scores and the mean duration of sleep reflux (ZMD) were calculated for the first and the last 12 h, respectively, and compared to each other, as well as to the full 24-h recording. The accuracy of the first and last 12 h in predicting whether the 24-h study was abnormal was 85% and 87%, respectively. The accuracy in predicting whether the ZMD for the 24-h study was abnormal was 73% and 83%, respectively, with an overall 39% false-negative rate. The 12-h study reproducibility was 72% for the total score and 56% for the ZMD. Since the original standards were determined from 18- to 24-h recordings, the test was restandardized based on 12-h recordings from patients with normal 24-h studies. Restandardization did not improve the accuracy or reproducibility. The high false-negative rate for the ZMD and the poor reproducibility cast serious doubt on the utility of 12-h pH recordings, especially in patients with respiratory symptoms.
Thirty-five cases of cholelithiasis diagnosed at a children's hospital over a 7.5-year period are reviewed and compared to 693 cases of pediatric gallstones reported in the literature. Symptomatology and associated medical history are more important in diagnosing cholelithiasis than are laboratory tests. Hemolytic disease is the most common associated condition in our series (46%) as well as in the literature (30%), but the frequency of the various associated conditions varies with age. Isolated gallstone disease does occur, particularly in the young infant. Jaundice is the most common symptom in children less than 1 year of age, being present in greater than 90 percent of symptomatic patients previously reported. Overall, the most common symptom in our series is vomiting (60%). Right upper quadrant pain in the absence of vomiting does not appear to be significant, as this occurred in only one patient (3%) in our series.
We report four cases of gallbladder hydrops associated with Kawasaki disease diagnosed over a 7.5 year period. Despite varying clinical presentations, all four of these patients had the common finding of bilirubinuria prior to clinical symptoms or at the time of admission. Review of 40 other cases of Kawasaki disease without evidence of hydrops over this time period revealed that urinalysis had been performed in each and bilirubinuria was present in only one case. Bilirubinuria appears to be an early indicator of hydrops in these patients.
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Small and rural hospitals have unique considerations that affect their approach to quality assurance (QA) and risk management (RM). These concerns include proportionately high fixed costs, small patient loads that limit their ability to balance profits and losses from Medicare patients, small medical staffs that limit their ability to provide peer review, and the general increase in malpractice litigation. QA and RM programs are critical to the survival of these hospitals, but they should be integrated as much as possible with other hospital activities.
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