Concern exists that liver transplant center substance abuse policies may have an inappropriate and disproportionate impact on marijuana users. Our hypothesis is that patients with chronic liver disease who were marijuana users will have inferior survival. This is a retrospective (1999-2007) cohort study. The primary outcome measure is time-dependent, adjusted patient survival from the time of liver transplant evaluation. The primary exposure variable is a positive cannabinoid toxicology screen during the liver transplant evaluation period. Overall, 155 patients qualified as marijuana users while 1334 patients were marijuana non-users. Marijuana users were significantly (p < 0.05) younger (48.3 vs. 52.1), more likely to be male (78.1% vs. 63.0%), have hepatitis C (63.9% vs. 40.6%) and were less likely to receive a transplant (21.8% vs. 14.8%). Marijuana users were more likely to use tobacco, narcotics, benzodiazepines, amphetamines, cocaine or barbiturates (p < 0.05). Unadjusted survival rates were similar between cohorts. Upon multivariate analysis, MELD score, hepatitis C and transplantation were significantly associated with survival, while marijuana use was not (HR 1.09, 95% CI 0.78-1.54). We conclude that patients who did and did not use marijuana had similar survival rates. Current substance abuse policies do not seen to systematically expose marijuana users to additional risk of mortality.

With the recent regulations limiting resident work hours, it has become more important to understand how residents spend their time. The volume and content of the pages they receive provide a valuable source of information that give insight into their workload and help identify inefficiencies in hospital communication. We hypothesized that above a certain workload threshold, paging data would suggest breakdowns in communication and implications for quality of care. All pages sent to six general surgery interns at the University of Michigan over the course of one academic year (7/1/2008-6/30/2009) were retrospectively categorized by sender type, message type, message modifier, and message quality. Census, discharge, and admission information for each intern service were also collected, and intern duties were further analyzed with respect to schedule. "On-call" days were defined as days on which the intern bore responsibility for care of all admitted floor patients. The interns received a total of 9,843 pages during the study period. During on-call shifts, each intern was paged an average of 57 ± 3 times, and those on non-call shifts received an average of 12 ± 3 pages. Floor/intensive care unit (ICU) nurses represented 32% of the page volume received by interns. Interestingly, as patient volume increased, there was a decrease in the number of pages received per patient. By contrast, at higher patient volumes, there was a trend toward an increasing percentage of urgent pages per patient. At high intern workloads, our data suggest no major communication breakdowns but reveal the potential for inferior quality of care.

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Purpose of review To evaluate the recent literature on mobile health applications available to patients for contraception and abortion care. Recent findings Women are increasingly interested in contraceptive tools utilizing mobile technology, and a majority of women expect them to be science-based. The largest number of available mobile apps supports natural family planning methods, which is recognized as the least effective contraceptive method. Many available apps cannot be relied on for accurate, science-based pregnancy prevention methods. Further, there is a paucity of data regarding use of mobile technology for women seeking or receiving abortion. Summary Further research is needed to evaluate mobile health apps and how they can best provide patient consumers with accurate, evidence-based information to support the prevention of unintended pregnancy.