ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: In Sweden, hospital stays, deaths, and censuses have long been stored on electronic media. AIMS: To apply post-hospital survival measures to hospitals having different degrees of specialization by linking existing data in census and in-patient registers. METHOD: In-patient records totaling 3.6 million were collected. They were linked to the 1985 and 1990 censuses regarding patients' background data, and the cause of death registers. Observed three-month mortalities in 27 diagnoses were contrasted against the expected. RESULTS: The three-month survival was lower than expected in some large, and, more often, in small hospitals [corrected].
Subject(s)
Cause of Death , Hospitalization , Medical Record Linkage , Registries , Survivors , Censuses , Disease/classification , Humans , Medical Audit , Outcome Assessment, Health Care , Quality of Health Care , SwedenABSTRACT
Excessively lax wrists more frequently become symptomatic if overloaded or injured than normal joints. Whether this is the consequence of biological or mechanical factors or both remains unknown. This study evaluates the relationship between the degree of joint laxity and scaphoid kinematic behaviour during radio-ulnar deviation of the wrist in 60 normal volunteers. There is a significant linear relationship between the direction of scaphoid rotation and the amount of wrist joint laxity. During lateral deviation of the wrist, joints that are more lax have a scaphoid rotating mainly along the sagittal plane of flexion and extension, with little lateral deviation. In contrast, the scaphoid of volunteers with decreased laxity rotate mostly along the frontal plane of radioulnar deviation with minimal flexion extension. These results support the concept of increased out-of-plane scaphoid rotation as a factor of increased vulnerability during over-work or injury.
