Objective: Huddles are short, regular debriefings that are designed to provide frontline staff and bedside caregivers environments to share problems and identify solutions. Daily huddle implementation could improve medical safety work, problem identification and improvement, situation awareness and teamwork enhancement, the collaboration and communication between professionals and departments, and patient safety. This study aimed evaluated the effectiveness of a hospital-based huddle at a general medical ward in Taiwan. Methods: A Continuous Integration team was conducted by combining multidisciplinary frontline staff to huddle at a 74-bed general medical ward. Team Huddles started twice a week. A physical huddle run board was created, which contained four parts, including idea submitted, idea approved, working on an idea and standardizing. Problems were submitted to the board to be identified, and the solutions were evaluated through huddle discussion. We divided the problems into two groups: quick hits (resolved within 24– 48hrs) and complex issues (resolved > 48hrs). An anonymous questionnaire was designed to evaluate the huddle response. Results: A total of 44 huddles occurred from September 9th, 2020, to September 30th, 2021, and 81 issues were identified and resolved. The majority issues were policy documentation (n=23; 28.4%). Sixty-seven (82.7%) issues were defined as quick hits, and the other fourteen (17.3%) issues were complex. The mean hours to the resolution of quick hits was 5.17 hours, median 3.5 hours, and range from 0.01– 15.4 hours. The mean days to resolve completion issues were 19.73 days, median 7.5 days, and range 3.57– 26.14 days. An overwhelming 92.9% of staff responded that huddles help to expedite the process to reach treatment goals, reduce clinical mistakes, near misses, reduce patient incidences, and help teamwork enhancement, with rating of 4.52 (on a 5-point Likert scale). Conclusion: Implementing of multidisciplinary team huddle improved the accountability of issue identification, problem-solving and teamwork enhancement.

Objective: A huddle is a short, regular meetings to discuss existing or emerging patient safety issues. Hospital administrators can encourage healthcare staff to voluntarily examine the potential occurrence and severity of risks, thereby enhancing awareness of patient safety. The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of huddle intervention on patient safety culture among medical team members and related factors. Methods: We used a one-group pretest-posttest research design and convenience sampled 109 members of the general internal medicine ward team members from a medical center in central Taiwan. They participated 2 times per week in 15-min huddles from 08:15 to 08:30 in the morning, which lasted for a total of 4 weeks. The process was based on submitted ideas, approved ideas, research ideas and standardization, and data on the safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ) were collected during the huddles’ intervention pretest and posttest. Results: After the huddle intervention, we found significantly improved scores for safety attitude, teamwork climate (76.49± 16.13 vs 83.26± 13.39, p < 0.001), safety climate (75.07± 16.07 vs 82.63± 13.72, p < 0.001), job satisfaction (73.67± 19.84 vs 83.39± 17.21, p < 0.001), perceptions of management (77.87± 19.99 vs 84.86± 16.03, p < 0.001) and working conditions (78.96± 18.16 vs 86.18± 14.90, p < 0.001). Correlation analyses on the differences between pretest and posttest showed that age had a significant correlation with safety climate (r = 0.22, p = 0.022) and working conditions (r = 0.20, p = 0.035). The number of times to participate in a huddle had a significant correlation with teamwork climate (r = 0.33, p =< .001), safety climate (r = 0.30, p = 0.002), job satisfaction (r = 0.19, p = 0.043), and work conditions (r = 0.28, p = 0.003). Conclusion: Huddles improve clinical team members’ understanding of different dimensions and relate factors of safety attitudes. Implementation of the huddles involved standardized process will help hospital administrators understand the steps to parallel expansion to other wards.

The aim of this study was to determine whether elevated serum level of uric acid (sUA) could predict renal outcome after contrast-enhanced computerized tomography (CCT). We used a historical cohort of 58,106 non-dialysis adult patients who received non-ionic iso-osmolar CCT from 1 June 2008 to 31 March 2015 to evaluate the association of sUA and renal outcome. The exclusion criteria were patients with pre-existing acute kidney injury (AKI), multiple exposure, non-standard volume of contrast, and missing data for analysis. A total of 1440 patients were enrolled. Post-contrast-AKI (PC-AKI), defined by the increase in serum creatinine ≥ 0.3 mg/dL within 48 h or ≥50% within seven days after CCT, occurred in 180 (12.5%) patients and the need of hemodialysis within 30 days developed in 90 (6.3%) patients, both incidences were increased in patients with higher sUA. sUA ≥ 8.0 mg/dL was associated with an increased risk of PC-AKI (odds ratio (OR) of 2.62; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.27~5.38, p = 0.009) and the need of hemodialysis (OR, 5.40; 95% CI, 1.39~21.04, p = 0.015). Comparing with sUA < 8.0 mg/dL, patients with sUA ≥ 8.0 mg/dL had higher incidence of PC-AKI (16.7% vs. 11.1%, p = 0.012) and higher incidence of hemodialysis (12.1% vs. 4.3%, p < 0.001). We concluded that sUA ≥ 8.0 mg/dL is associated with worse renal outcome after CCT. We suggest that hyperuricemia may have potential as an independent risk factor for PC-AKI in patients receiving contrast-enhanced image study.

The aim of this study was to update the information on internationally acceptable standards and clinical practice recommendations for the management of patients with primary aldosteronism (PA). The Taiwan Society of Aldosteronism (TSA) Task Force acknowledged the novel issues of PA and reached a group consensus on PA in Taiwan by collecting the best available evidence and conducting one group meeting, several conference calls, and multiple e-mail communications. Unilateral adrenalectomy is the preferred treatment for patients with aldosterone-producing adenoma (APA). For medical treatment with mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs), spironolactone is the first-line treatment, and eplerenone is a reasonable alternative in PA patients intolerant or contraindicated to spironolactone. The dose of MRAs can be titrated according to plasma renin activity (PRA). For screening PA-related comorbidities, we suggest albuminuria to predict a post-treatment decline in renal function, echocardiography as cardiac evaluation, bone mineral density scan for osteoporosis, and obstructive sleep apnea. In tissue and genetic surveys, we suggest immunohistochemical staining and somatic mutation screening for post-operative adrenal specimens in APA patients. With this consensus, we hope to update the information on PA for clinical physicians to facilitate better identification, management and treatment of patients with PA.

Contrast-medium-associated kidney injury is caused by the infusion of contrast media. Small vessel disease is significantly associated with various diseases, including simultaneous conditions of the kidney and brain, which are highly vulnerable to similar vascular damage and microvascular pathologies. Data to investigate the adverse effect of contrast media on the brain remain extremely lacking. In this study, 11,332,616 NHI enrollees were selected and divided into two groups, exposed and not exposed to a contrast medium during the observation period, from which 1,461,684 pairs were selected for analyses through matching in terms of age, sex, comorbidities, and frequency of outpatient visits during the previous year. In total, 1,461,684 patients exposed to a contrast medium and 1,461,684 controls not exposed to one were enrolled. In multivariable Cox proportional hazard models, patients exposed to a contrast medium had an overall 2.09-fold higher risk of dementia. In multivariable-stratified analyses, the risk of Alzheimer’s disease was remarkably high in younger patients without any underlying comorbidity. This study is the first to discover that exposure to contrast media is significantly associated with the risk of dementia. A four-fold increased risk of vascular dementia was observed after exposure to a contrast medium. Further studies on the influence of exposure to contrast media on the brain are warranted.

Introduction: Air pollution is a novel environmental risk factor for chronic kidney disease (CKD). Air quality improved during COVID-19 lockdowns; however, the effects of these lockdowns on PM_2.5 concentrations and renal function remain unclear. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study to compare air pollution and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) decline in patients with stage 5 CKD between a year-long period of lockdown (2020; n = 724) and a similar period before lockdown (2019, n = 758). Results: Compared with 2019, a 17.5% reduction in the average PM_2.5 concentration (from 17.36% to 14.32%; P < 0.001) and a 45.1% reduction (from 20.56% to 11.25%; P < 0.001) in cumulative days with PM_2.5 concentration > 35 μg/m³ were noted in 2020. Moreover, a 93% reduction in PM_2.5 air quality index > 150 per station-day (from 0.43% to 0.03%) was observed in 2020. From 2019 to 2020, the yearly incidence of eGFR decline ≥ 5 mL/min/1.73 m² decreased by 33.7% (24.6% vs 16.3%; P < 0.001). Similarly, the proportion of patients who started undergoing regular dialysis also decreased by 32.7% in 2020 (from 20.8% to 14.0%; P = 0.001). Conclusion: Our findings suggest that fewer events of renal function decline during the COVID-19 pandemic may be associated with a decline in PM_2.5 concentrations, supporting the global strategy of reducing air pollution to prevent CKD progression.