Evidence-based nutrition for the malnourished, hospitalised patient: one bite at a time

Malnutrition is highly prevalent in the inpatient setting, particularly in older patients with multiple morbidities, but the medical community struggles to find efficient, evidence-based approaches for its prevention and treatment.

Achieving care: promoting alternatives to industrial healthcare

So-called industrial healthcare provides patients, who may have poorly understood problems, with standardised care, rather than care particularised for that individual patient.

Prevalence of genetic susceptibility for breast and ovarian cancer in a non-cancer related study population: secondary germline findings from a Swiss single centre cohort

Since the advent of high-throughput sequencing technologies, organised germline screening, independent of personal and family cancer history, has been frequently proposed. A critical prerequisite is knowledge of the expected carrier frequencies.

Prevalence of high-risk drug-drug interactions in paediatric inpatients: a retrospective, single-centre cohort analysis

Drug-drug interaction (DDI) screening programmes aim to increase the safety of medication by issuing alerts based on the severity of DDIs. However, not all DDI alerts may be clinically relevant.

Outcome after out-of-hospital ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia: comparison of before and after the implementation of the 2010 Guidelines in a single centre

Improvements to guidelines and efforts to train and equip laypersons and medical professionals are expected to result in improvements in the outcomes of patients experiencing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Estimation of treatment allocation in a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial

The internal validity of double-blinding in randomised placebo-controlled trials (RCT) has become a target of criticism. In several studies, the accuracy of patients’ and physicians’ guesses as to the assigned treament was striking.

Antimicrobial resistance trends in Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Proteus mirabilis urinary isolates from Switzerland: retrospective analysis of data from a national surveillance network over an 8-year period (2009–2016)

Guidelines on urinary tract infection (UTI) now recommend nitrofurantoin and fosfomycin as first-line options for lower UTI in women and discourage the use of quinolones because of the potential collateral damage in terms of the selection of drug-resistant organisms.

Extra-abdominal desmoid tumours – further evidence for the watchful waiting policy

Extra-abdominal desmoid tumours are benign and rare, and lead to a persistent treatment dilemma because of their high recurrence rate and their heterogeneous behaviour.

Emergency department presentations related to abuse of prescription and over-the-counter drugs in Switzerland: time trends, sex and age distribution

The European Drug Emergencies Network (Euro-DEN) Plus project has been collecting data on acute intoxications with recreational substances (illicit and prescription/OTC drugs) and emergency presentations across Europe since 2013.

Advanced carotid atherosclerosis in middle-aged subjects: comparison with PROCAM and SCORE risk categories, the potential for reclassification and cost-efficiency of carotid ultrasound in the setting of primary care

This study compared use of carotid ultrasound for risk classification with PROCAM and SCORE risk categories, and investigated the potential for reclassification and cost-efficiency in the setting of primary care.