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Chronic Disease or Injury

Presented December 14, 2017 for the Poison Center and Public Health Collaboration Community of Practice.

Presenters

Gaylord Lopez, PharmD, DABAT, Director – Georgia Poison Center

Stephanie Hon, PharmD, DABAT, Assistant Director – Georgia Poison Center

Laura Edison, DVM, MPH, Epidemiology Field Officer – Geogria Department of Health

Nelly Miles, BA, Director – Georgia Bureau of Investigation Office of Public Affairs

In 2010, there were 4,796 snake bite exposures reported to Poison Centers nationwide (1). Health care providers frequently request help from poison centers regarding snake envenomations due to the unpredictability and complexity of prognosis and treatment. The Missouri Poison Center (MoPC) maintains a surveillance database keeping track of every phone call received. ESSENCE, a syndromic surveillance system used in Missouri, enables surveillance by chief complaint of 84 different emergency departments (ED) in Missouri (accounting for approximately 90% of all ED visits statewide). Since calling a poison center is voluntary for health care providers, poison center data is most likely an underestimation of the true frequency of snake envenomations. Comparing MoPC and ESSENCE data for snake envenomations would enable the MoPC to have a more accurate depiction of snake bite frequency in Missouri and to see where future outreach of poison center awareness should be focused.

Objective

This study intends to use two different surveillance systems available in Missouri to explore snake bite frequency and geographic distribution.

Submitted by uysz on

Veterans accessing Veterans Affairs (VA) health care have higher suicide rates and more characteristics associated with suicide risk, including being male, having multiple medical and psychiatric comorbidities, and being an older age, compared with the general U.S. population. The Veterans Crisis Line is a telephone hotline available to Veterans with urgent mental health concerns; however, not all Veterans are aware of this resource. By contrast, telephone triage is a national telephone-based triage system used by the VA to assess and triage all Veterans with acute medical or mental health complaints.

Objective

To characterize Veterans who call telephone triage because of suicidal ideation (SI) or depression and to identify opportunities for suicide prevention efforts among these telephone triage users using a biosurveillance application.

 

Submitted by uysz on

Prostate cancer (PC) is the most common invasive cancer diagnosed among US men. The majority of PCs are organ-confined at diagnosis making them candidates for treatment using RAD, SURG, or other protocols. Several studies have provided preliminary evidence that radiation treatment of prostate cancer may increase subsequent rectal cancer risk (1-2). Data specifying type of RAD treatment of PC was not available for the study period.

Objective:

We sought to assess whether external beam radiation (RAD) treatment of prostate cancer, that exposes the rectum to ionizing radiation, was followed by increased hazards for rectal cancer, relative to prostatectomy (SURG).

 

Submitted by Magou on

Over the last decade, the application of syndromic surveillance systems has expanded beyond early event detection to include longterm disease trend monitoring. However, statistical methods employed for analyzing syndromic data tend to focus on early event detection. Generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) may be a useful statistical framework for examining long-term disease trends because, unlike other models, GLMMs account for clustering common in syndromic data, and GLMMs can assess disease rates at multiple spatial and temporal levels (1). We show the benefits of the GLMM by using a GLMM to estimate asthma syndrome rates in New York City from 2007 to 2012, and to compare high and low asthma rates in Harlem and the Upper East Side (UES) of Manhattan.

Objective:

Show the benefits of using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) to examine long-term trends in asthma syndrome data.

 

Submitted by Magou on

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) can help clinicians improve decisions regarding opioid prescribing. However, since state laws and regulations governing access to these systems often apply only to providers licensed in the states in which the PDMP is located, and many federal health care workers are not so licensed, many federal providers are not subject to requirements. This fact sheet outlines the policies of the three federal health care institutions with regard to the use of PDMPs when prescribing opioids.

Submitted by ctong on

Drug overdose claimed the lives of more than 63,000 Americans in 2016. The majority of these deaths, over 42,000, involved opioids such as heroin, prescription painkillers, and, increasingly, illicitly manufactured fentanyl. Indiana is not immune to this national crisis. In 2003, for example, only three Indiana residents died from heroin-related overdose. In 2016, the number was 296.

Submitted by ctong on

The overdose crisis continues unabated. While the epidemic was originally fueled largely by prescription opioid pain relievers, around 2010 a dramatic increase in heroin-related overdoses began. After remaining essentially stable for years, overdose deaths involving heroin spiked rapidly, more than tripling between 2010 and 2014. Starting in 2014, the epidemic began another transformation. Black market drug products—both heroin and counterfeit pills - became increasingly adulterated with illicitly—manufactured synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl analogues.

Submitted by ctong on
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