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Our model shows that benefit from primary prevention ICD implantation is determined by the patient's age and stage of kidney disease. While there is limited impact with lower stages of CKD, careful consideration of ICD implantation is suggested for older patients with more advanced stages of kidney disease.

Our data clearly demonstrate a significant gender disparity in utilization of CRT devices. Further studies are needed to find possible reasons behind this disparity.

The decision to replace a device under advisory is determined primarily by the incidence of device malfunction and the likely effects of device failure. This analysis provides a framework for managing recalled devices in the context of device, patient, and institutional characteristics.

We did not find a significant improvement in blood pressure or renal function in patients with renal artery stenosis treated with renal artery revascularisation compared to medical therapy alone. However, trial quality was a limitation.

We found that despite a fairly conservative device replacement strategy for advisories, we still replaced more devices when it was not the preferred device management strategy predicted by a decision analysis model. This study demonstrates that even when risks and benefits are being considered by experienced clinicians, a formal decision analysis can help to develop a systematic evidence based approach and potentially avoid unnecessary procedures.

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Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for review ing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and review ing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimat e or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, ABSTRACT (Maximum 200 w ords)A Probability of Survival Decision Aid (PSDA) is developed to predict survival time for hypothermia and dehydration during prolonged exposure at sea in both air and water for a wide range of environmental conditions. PSDA calculates the survival time of a victim in the water or floating in an emergency craft as a function of human anthropometric parameters, clothing, and environmental variables. PSDA consists of a Six Cylinder Thermoregulatory Model (SCTM) and a Graphic User Interface (GUI) which manages inputs, runs the models, and displays output.The GUI allows users to easily use PSDA by selecting or entering inputs for ten basic parameters. It is then updated to display predictions for the cold functional time, cold survival time, dehydration survival time, and the empirical dehydration survival time. PSDA was validated using historical survival data, reported cases for accidental water immersions, and limited data for channel swimmers. For ten immersion victims for whom height and weight are known, the predicted survival time for each victim was either very close to or greater than the observed survival time. However, the predictive capability of PSDA is limited by the supporting data.