Hello everyone!
This week I was finally able to start working on my project. I was given 300 patients who have been diagnosed with an infection, and my job is to go through all of their charts. First, I am looking for co-morbidities that may have increased their chance of getting an infection, for example research shows that kidney disease increases a patient’s chance of getting an infection. But their is a lot of disagreement among researchers about which co-morbidities truly increase a patients chance of infection. For example, some doctors believe obesity is a co-morbidity while other doctors do not. I will be looking at the 300 patients that I received, and document any information that could be a co-morbidity for infection. Once doctors agree upon a list of co-morbidities, they will be able to inform their patients of their individual risk of getting an infection before getting surgery. This way a patient has a better understanding of their risk. The incidence of infection is between one to two percent, but if a patient has kidney disease, than their chance of infection is obviously going to be slightly higher.
I will also be looking at complications the patients had after surgery, such as stiffness, pain, or wound drainage. From the patient charts that I have through so far it seems like a sudden increase of pain, wound drainage, and purulence are a few of the key indications of infection.
The last thing I will be looking for are the lab results for each patient. The three main tests doctors will usually order when there are indications of infection are a white blood cell count, a erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and a C-reactive protein test (CRP).
Next week, I hope to be able to share some of the co-morbidities, complications, and lab result values that would be found with an infection.
Until then,
Komal Majhail
Good luck with your work. Looking towards the algorithm, how is it planned to have each co-morbidity collectively determine a patient's risk factor?
ReplyDeleteGood to hear the study's started. What do you mean by a co-morbidity? Is it just any other condition a patient has?
ReplyDeleteI am excited to hear that you have been able to jump into your research! Have you found that each patient's charts are organized the same, or have you had to spent some time learning how to read each chart differently in order to find the information you need?
ReplyDeleteSounds like they are really keeping you busy! Sounds like you're having a lot of fun with the work! Will you be able to interview any of these patients once you narrow down the list or will you be conducting research on just the dry data?
ReplyDeleteHi Komal. Hopefully your chart reviews went well last week. It can be tedious work to go through all of that paperwork and extract the information you are looking for, but once you begin to better understand what you are looking at I'm sure that it will go faster. I'm looking forward to hearing about what you learn from the patient charts.
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