Method exploration of telephone follow-up in clinical research / 中国胸心血管外科临床杂志

@#Telephone follow-up is one of the important ways to follow up patients. High-quality follow-up can benefit both doctors and patients. However, clinical research-related follow-up is often faced with problems such as time-consuming, laborious and poor patient compliance. The authors belong to a team that has been committed to the study of patient-reported outcomes for a long time. The team has carried out long-term follow-up of symptoms, daily function and postoperative complications of more than 1 000 patients after lung cancer surgery, and accumulated certain experience. In this paper, the experience of telephone follow-up was summarized and discussed with relevant literatures from the aspects of clarifying the purpose of clinical research follow-up, understanding the needs of patients in follow-up, and using follow-up skills.

Discussion of the process of conducting an investigator-initiated research / 中国胸心血管外科临床杂志

@#The number of investigator initiated research (IIR) is increasing. But the recognition and management of IIR in China is still in its infancy, and there is a lack of specific and operable guidance for the implementation process. Based on our practical experiences, previous literature reports, and current policy regulations, the authors took prospective IIR as an example to summarize the implementation process of IIR into 14 steps, which are as the following: study initiation, ethical review, study registration, study filing, case report form design, database establishment, standard operating procedure making, investigator training, informed consent, data collection, data entry, data verification, data locking and data archiving.

Relationship between long-term mortality and diabetic complications in 139 patients with diabetic foot ulcer / 中华内分泌代谢杂志

Objective To determine the mortality and associated risk factors in the patients with diabetic foot ulcers. Methods One hundred and sixty-three patients with diabetic foot ulcers hospitalized from January 2001 to December 2006 were followed up until December 2009. Mortality rates were derived from Kaplan-Meier survival curves. The prognostic factors were evaluated with Cox proportional hazard model. Results Follow-up was successful in 139 out of 163 patients, with a mean follow-up period of(3.71 + 1. 80)years. 55 patients(39 males and 16 females)died during the follow-up. The 5-year mortality was 45.8% and mean survival time was 5.38 years(95% CI 4.87-5.89). The median survival time was 6.83 years. Age, smoking, hypertension, coronary artery disease, and diabetic nephropathy were found to be independent prognostic factors for mortality. Conclusions Diabetic foot ulcers increased the mortality of diabetic patients. Age, smoking, hypertension, coronary artery disease, and diabetic nephropathy were predictive risk factors for mortality.