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Background and Aims: Patients who leave Emergency Department before physician’s visit (LWBS) or during treatment (LDT) represent a useful indicator of the emergency care's quality. The profile of patients LWBS was described: they are generally males, young, with lower urgency triage allocation and longer waiting time. They have a greater risk of ED re-admission compared to discharged patients, but effect on hospitalization and mortality are more controversial. The aims of this study are to identify determinants and adverse short term outcomes for LWBS and LDT patients. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study that include all ED visits of LWBS, LDT and discharged patients in 2015 in the Lazio region, Central Italy. Determinants of LWBS or LDT were selected from gender, age, citizenship, residence area, triage category, chronic comorbidities, number of uncompleted ED visit in the previous year, mode of arrival in ED, time-band, day of the week, waiting time and ED crowding, using a multi-level logistic regression. A multivariate logistic regression was used to test if LWBS or LDT have a greater risk of short term adverse outcome compared to discharged patients. Results: The cohort consists in 835,440 visits in ED, 86.8% subjects visited and discharged, 8.9% subjects are LWBS patients and 4.3% LDT. LWBS and LDT patients are mainly young, males, with a less severe triage, with long waiting times in ED. Moreover, ED crowding and leaving ED before physician’s visit in the previous year are risk factors of self-discharging. LWBS and LDT patients have a higher risk of readmission (LWBS: OR = 4.63, 95%CI 4.5–4.7; OR = 2.89, 95%CI 2.8–2.9; LDT: OR = 3.12, 95%CI 3–3.2; OR = 2.25, 95%CI2.2–2.3 for readmissions within 2 and 7 days respectively) and hospitalization (LWBS: OR = 3.65, 95%CI 3.4–3.9; OR = 2.25, 95%CI 2.1–2.4; LDT: OR = 3.96, 95%CI 3.6–4.3; OR = 2.62, 95%CI 2.4–2.8 for hospitalization within 2 and 7 days respectively). Furthermore, we find a mortality excess of risk for LWBS patients compared to the reference group (OR = 2.56, 95%CI1.6–4.2; OR = 1.7, 95%CI 1.3–2.2 within 2 and 7 days respectively). Conclusions: Determinants of LWBS confirmed what already known, but LDT patients should be further investigated. There could be adverse health effects for people with LWBS and LDT behaviour. This could be an issue that the Regional Health System should deal with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Several studies have reported an increased risk of wheezing in the children of mothers who used paracetamol during pregnancy. We evaluated to what extent this association is explained by confounding. Methods: We investigated the association between maternal paracetamol use in the first and third trimester of pregnancy and ever wheezing or recurrent wheezing/asthma in infants in the NINFEA cohort study. Risks ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated after adjustment for confounders, including maternal infections and antibiotic use during pregnancy. Results: The prevalence of maternal paracetamol use was 30.6% during the first and 36.7% during the third trimester of pregnancy. The prevalence of ever wheezing and recurrent wheezing/asthma was 16.9% and 5.6%, respectively. After full adjustment, the RR for ever wheezing decreased from 1.25 [1.07–1.47] to 1.10 [0.94–1.30] in the first, and from 1.26 [1.08–1.47] to 1.10 [0.93–1.29] in the third trimester. A similar pattern was observed for recurrent wheezing/asthma. Duration of maternal paracetamol use was not associated with either outcome. Further analyses on paracetamol use for three non-infectious disorders (sciatica, migraine, and headache) revealed no increased risk of wheezing in children. Conclusion: The association between maternal paracetamol use during pregnancy and infant wheezing is mainly, if not completely explained by confounding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Noninvasive physical management is often prescribed for headache and neck pain. Systematic reviews, however, indicate that the evidence of its efficacy is limited. Our aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of a workplace educational and physical program in reducing headache and neck/shoulder pain. Methodology/Principal Findings: Cluster-randomized controlled trial. All municipal workers of the City of Turin, Italy, were invited to participate. Those who agreed were randomly assigned, according to their departments, to the intervention group (IG) or to the control group and were given diaries for the daily recording of pain episodes for 1 month (baseline). Subsequently, only the IG (119 departments, 923 workers) began the physical and educational program, whereas the control group (117 departments, 990 workers) did not receive any intervention. All participants were again given diaries for the daily recording of pain episodes after 6 months of intervention. The primary outcome was the change in the frequency of headache (expressed as the proportion of subjects with a ≥50% reduction of frequency; responder rate); among the secondary outcomes there were the absolute reduction of the number of days per month with headache and neck/shoulder pain. Differences between the two groups were evaluated using mixed-effect regression models. The IG showed a higher responder rate [risk ratio, 95% confidence interval (CI)] for headache (1.58; 1.28 to 1.92) and for neck/shoulder pain (1.53; 1.27 to 1.82), and a larger reduction of the days per month (95% CI) with headache (-1.72; -2.40 to -1.04) and with neck/shoulder pain (-2.51; -3.56 to -1.47). Conclusions: The program effectively reduced headache and neck/shoulder pain in a large working community and appears to be easily transferable to primary-care settings. Further trials are needed to investigate the program effectiveness in a clinical setting, for highly selected patients suffering from specific headache types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]