Editor's Note Faced with weak demand and falling prices, manufacturers are improving their product warranties and adding cost-sharing guarantees to compensate hospitals if their medical-surgical devices don’t perform as expected, Reuters reports. Among the companies offering the new guarantees are Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, and St Jude Medical, which have…

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Editor's Note This study found that current and former smoking by surgical patients negatively influenced outcomes following major cardiovascular and oncology procedures. Current smokers had higher odds of overall, pulmonary, wound, and septic/shock complications compared with nonsmokers. The odds of having adverse outcomes were significantly lower in former smokers, but…

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Editor's Note Mammography for detection of breast cancer does not reduce the number of deaths from the disease and may lead to overdiagnosis, this study finds. Researchers analyzed data of more than 16 million women in 547 countries in 2000 and followed them for 10 years. The results showed a…

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Editor's Note Work-hour restrictions for surgical resident, revised nationally 4 years ago to protect patients against fatigue-related errors, have not had the desired effect of lowering postoperative complication rates, according to this new study. Researchers from the American College of Surgeons found no significant difference in surgical outcomes between 1…

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Editor's Note New research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing shows patient and nurse outcomes in Kaiser Permanente hospitals were significantly better than other hospitals. Differences in nursing explained a significant proportion of Kaiser’s outcomes advantages. The researchers found that Kaiser hospitals have significantly better nurse work environments,…

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Editor's Note Including a health information exchange query into emergency department patient care could significantly reduce the number of tests ordered and reduce costs, finds this study. Efficient health information exchange was associated with a 52% reduction in lab tests and a 36% reduction in radiology exams per patient ordered…

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Editor's Note In this study, researchers found a significant association between patient satisfaction scores and surgical quality measures. Of 180 hospitals, the overall mean patient satisfaction score was 68% (lowest quartile, 59%; highest quartile, 77%). Patients treated in hospitals in the highest quartile had significantly lower risks of death, failure…

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Editor's Note Surgical readmissions within 10 days of discharge were disproportionately common and associated with increased mortality in this study. Increasing time-to-readmission correlated with a stepwise decrease in mortality: For example, 90-day mortality was 12.6% in patients readmitted between 1 and 5 days, 11.4% at 6 to 10 days, and…

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Editor's Note In this study, postoperative blood transfusions after noncardiac surgery were linked to increased adverse postoperative outcomes, except for postoperative myocardial infarction. This analysis of nearly 50,000 patients at 52 hospitals found that postoperative transfusions were associated with an increased risk of 30-day mortality (3.6%), morbidity (4.4%), and infections…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration on July 1 issued a Class I recall, the most serious, of FLOW-I Anesthesia Systems by Maquet. Maquet has received 10 reports of patient cassettes (ie, the center of gas flow in the system) coming loose. The cassette locking device may accidentally release…

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