Background: The Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM) questionnaire is designed for rating the non-technical performance of emergency medical teams during emergencies, e.g., resuscitation or trauma management. Originally developed in Australia it has today been translated and validated into eleven languages, but a Swedish version is lacking. The aim was therefore to cross-culturally translate and evaluate the reliability and validity of the TEAM questionnaire in a Swedish health care setting. Methods: The instrument was forward and backward translated and adapted into a Swedish context according to established guidelines for cross-cultural adaptation of survey-based measures. The translated version was tested through 78 pairwise assessments of 39 high-priority codes at the emergency departments of two major hospitals. The raters observed the teams at work in real time and filled in the questionnaires immediately afterwards independently of each other. Psychometric properties of the instrument were evaluated. Results: The original instrument was translated by pairs of translators independently of each other and reviewed by an expert committee of researchers, nurses and physicians from different specialties, a linguist and one of the original developers of the tool. A few adaptations were needed for the Swedish context. A principal component factor analysis confirmed a single ‘teamwork’ construct in line with the original instrument. The Swedish version showed excellent reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.955 and a mean inter-item correlation of 0.691. The mean item-scale correlation of 0.82 indicated high internal consistency reliability. Inter-rater reliability was measured by intraclass correlation and was 0.74 for the global score indicating good reliability. Individual items ranged between 0.52 and 0.88. No floor effects but ceiling effects were noted. Finally, teams displaying clear closed-loop communication had higher TEAM scores than teams with less clear communication. Conclusions: Real time observations of authentic, high priority cases at two emergency departments show that the Swedish version of the TEAM instrument has good psychometric properties for evaluating team performance. The TEAM instrument is thus a welcome tool for assessing non-technical skills of emergency medical teams.

Current European guidelines recommend both eversion carotid endarterectomy (CEA) and conventional CEA with routine patch closure, rather than routine primary closure. Polyester and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) have been used as patch material for a long time. More recently, bovine pericardium has been used; however, there are few studies comparing long term results between bovine pericardium and other patch types. The aim of this study was to investigate the short and long term results after CEA depending on surgical technique and patch material. A registry based study on all primary CEAs (n = 9 205) performed for symptomatic carotid artery stenosis in Sweden from July 2008 to December 2019, cross linked with data from the Swedish stroke registry, Riksstroke, and chart review for evaluation of any events occurring during follow up. The primary endpoint was ipsilateral stroke < 30 days. Secondary endpoints included re-operations due to neck haematoma and < 30 day ipsilateral stroke, > 30 day ipsilateral stroke, all stroke > 30 days, and all cause mortality. 2 495 patients underwent eversion CEA and 6 710 conventional CEA for symptomatic carotid stenosis. The most commonly used patch material was Dacron (n = 3 921), followed by PTFE (n = 588) and bovine pericardium (n = 413). A total of 1 788 patients underwent conventional CEA with primary closure. Two hundred and seventy-three patients (3.0%) had a stroke < 30 days. Primary closure was associated with an increased risk of ipsilateral stroke and stroke or death <30 days: odds ratio 1.7 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.2 - 2.4, p = .002); and 1.5 (95% CI 1.2 - 2.0), respectively. During follow up (median 4.2 years), 592 patients had any form of stroke and 1 492 died. There was no significant difference in long term risk of ipsilateral stroke, all stroke, or death depending on surgical technique or patch material. There was an increased risk of ipsilateral stroke < 30 days in patients operated on with primary closure compared with eversion CEA and patch angioplasty. There was no difference between primary closure, different patch types, or eversion after the peri-operative phase.

Chronic hyponatremia is common in hospitalized patients and associated with high mortality. To what extent this reflects a causal effect remains uncertain. This study was based on the Stockholm Sodium Cohort, a longitudinal laboratory data repository covering 1.6 million individuals from 2005 to 2018. Using 1:1 propensity score matching, we explored mortality rates and causes of death in patients with mild (130-134 mmol/L), moderate (125-129 mmol/L), profound (120-124 mmol/L) or very profound (<120 mmol/L) hyponatremia compared to patients with normal (135-145 mmol/L) sodium concentrations on admittance to medical wards. In total, 283 837 individuals fulfilled inclusion criteria, 79 407 of which had hyponatremia. Of these, 66 941 (52.7 % women) were successfully matched to counterparts with normal sodium concentrations. Thirty-day mortality rates were higher in patients with hyponatremia (HRs from 1.35 [95 % CI 1.28-1.42] in mild to 3.38 [95 % CI 2.16-5.28] in very profound hyponatremia). One-year mortality rates were marginally elevated in patients with mild hyponatremia (HR 1.04 [95 %CI 1.01-1.07]), but higher with more pronounced hyponatremia (HRs 1.18 [95 %CI 1.09-1.27] to 1.38 [95 %CI 1.11-1.69]). Excess 30-day mortality in mild, moderate, and profound hyponatremia was largely driven by malignant and gastrointestinal diseases. Excess mortality with hyponatremia is proportional to the sodium disturbance but attenuates over time. However, causes of death suggest that residual confounding from imbalanced severity of underlying diseases is the main cause of increased mortality.