Health services, suicide, and self-harm: patient distress and system anxiety.

Patients often become distressed in health settings, and provision of emotional support is a routine part of clinical care. However, in some situations, patient distress can become disturbing to both clinicians and patients, and can affect ordinary therapeutic engagement. We argue that health systems that support people presenting with suicidal acts and self-harm are particularly at risk of providing maladaptive responses, which we have termed dysregulation. If health systems become dysregulated, staff and patients might find it difficult to think clearly and respond adaptively. We describe some common characteristics of dysregulation, including negative feelings about patients, an inappropriately narrow focus on diagnosis and risk assessment, and ad-hoc, abrupt, and inconsistent decision making. These dysregulated responses might impair more adaptive responses such as containment of distress, safety planning, and negotiated responsibility with patients and carers. We discuss the main drivers of dysregulation and the implications for clinical practice in the management of self-harm and suicide risk.

High anti-A titres may not preclude ABO-incompatible renal transplantation: an autoantibody could be the culprit.

ABO-incompatible live donor renal transplantation is a growing field. To avoid hyperacute rejection, pre-operative ABO antibody titres should be < 8. There are a number of therapeutic measures used to reduce these titres if they are high. This case report describes a patient initially found to have an extremely high anti-A IgG titre (512). The high titre results were concomitant with a positive atypical antibody screen, which showed no specificity on identification. A strategy to assess true titre levels and remove sub-clinical autoantibodies was devised, leading to successful transplantation.