PURPOSE: This study aims to review the appropriateness of the issued death certificates and autopsy reports and to evaluate the improvement points of these documents in accordance with the guidelines of the Korean Medical Association and the National Statistical Office. Moreover, this study also examines why the guideline is necessary for the credibility of these documents. METHODS: The death certificates and autopsy reports written by a training hospital were analyzed for a 12-month period, between December 2014 and November 2015. The reference to analysis was the “guidelines to medical certificate 2015” written by the Korean Medical Association, “World Health Organization (WHO) death certificate principle”, and “guideline leaflet,” as provided by the National Statistical Office. Two researchers analyzed the documents that were against the guidelines, and suggested improvement points. The analyzed variables were age, sex, issued date, direct cause of death, manner of death, location of death, and types of accident. The primary goal was to see the rate of issued documents written correctly according to the guidelines and to suggest possible improvement points. The secondary goal was to analyze the reason for accordance and discordance between researchers. RESULTS: There were a total of 603 death certificates and autopsy reports issued during the research period; 562 (93.2%) and 41 (6.8%) cases, respectively. As for the manner of death, 521 cases were “death from disease,” 64 were “external causes,” and 18 were “others or unknown” (86.4%, 10.6%, and 3.0%, respectively). As for the issued department, internal medicine and emergency medicine issued 301 (49.9%) and 126 (20.9%) documents, respectively. Of these, 139 (23.1%) cases were regarded to be in accordance with the guidelines, while 304 (50.4%) were considered to be discordant cases. Among the discordant cases, there were 177 (29.4%) cases that were the mode of death directly written to cause of death. As for the records of “period of occurrence to death” were recorded only 70 (11.7%) cases (including “unknown” 65 cases) and the others were blank. The Kappa number of analysis regarding the evaluation correspondence of the two researchers was 0.44 (95% confidence interval, 0.38 to 0.51). CONCLUSION: The most frequent error was ‘the condition of death to direct cause of death’ with the ratio of 29.4%. This may have been because the rate of concordance between the researchers based on the guidelines was not high enough. There is a need to provide specific guidelines for each case, and also promote and educate regarding significant errors.
Autopsy ; Cause of Death ; Death Certificates* ; Emergency Medicine ; Internal Medicine ; Medical Errors ; Observational Study*

PURPOSE: Abdominal computed tomography (CT) is a widely recognized method to diagnose patients with acute abdominal pain in the emergency departments (EDs). We aimed to investigate the current state and interpretations of abdominal CT performed in the ED of a tertiary university hospital. METHODS: This was a retrospective study based on an abdominal CT database and medical records of patients over 15 years of age, who had visited our ED between January 1 and December 31, 2013. The data collected included CT types, final interpretations, characteristics of the patients, and location of pain at the time of CT. RESULTS: A total of 1,978 abdominal CTs were performed among 1,923 patients during the research period. The most frequent organs involved in the major diagnosis were those in the urinary system, followed by the appendix, liver, large intestine, and gallbladder. The most frequently interpreted diagnoses in these organs were in the order of urinary stone, appendicitis, liver cirrhosis, infectious colitis, and acute cholecystitis. The most frequent location of pain was the right lower quadrant (429 cases, 21.7%), and the most frequently performed CT types were contrast-enhanced abdominal and pelvic CT (1,260 cases, 63.7%). CONCLUSION: Various interpretations were derived based on the abdominal CTs, ranging from critical to mild diseases and from common to rare diseases. Based on this study, we have developed a preliminary interpretation checklist for abdominal CTs.
Abdominal Pain ; Appendicitis ; Appendix ; Checklist* ; Cholecystitis, Acute ; Colitis ; Diagnosis ; Emergencies* ; Emergency Service, Hospital* ; Gallbladder ; Humans ; Intestine, Large ; Liver ; Liver Cirrhosis ; Medical Records ; Methods ; Rare Diseases ; Retrospective Studies ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed ; Urinary Calculi

Objective: The Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) guidelines have been associated with reduced mortality in sepsis patients. On the other hand, previous studies were performed using the Sepsis-2 definitions and past guidelines. This study assessed the association between compliance with the 2016 SSC guidelines and the outcomes of patients with sepsis and septic shock in accordance with the latest Sepsis-3 definitions. Methods: Three hundred and fifteen patients with sepsis and septic shock were enrolled in this study. The patients were stratified according to their compliance with the SSC guidelines bundle. The characteristics and outcomes of the compliance and non-compliance groups were compared. In the overall patients, the risk factors for all-cause mortality were assessed using Cox proportional hazards models. Results: Among the patients, 172 and 143 patients were in the compliance group and non-compliance group, respectively. The baseline characteristics and disease severity were similar in the two groups. The all-cause mortality rates were 27.3% and 38.5% in the compliance group and non-compliance group, respectively (P=0.035). The all-cause mortality was significantly lower in the compliance group than in the non-compliance group (log-rank test, P=0.025). The risk factors for the all-cause mortality were age (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.025; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.008-1.042; P=0.004), septic shock (aHR, 3.14; 95% CI, 1.98-4.98; P<0.001), and lactate levels (aHR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.03-1.14; P=0.002). The overall compliance with the guidelines protected against all-cause mortality (aHR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.45-0.98; P=0.040). Conclusion Compliance with the SSC guidelines bundle was associated with a lower all-cause mortality among patients with sepsis and septic shock