IORD – Ongoing approved projects and project outputs

From a recent audit using clinical observation standards, we have identified that 1 in 4 patients admitted through the Hyperacute Stroke Unit at Oxford University Hospitals deteriorate, and that infection may play an important role in some deteriorations. National monitoring consistently ... READ MORE

Pneumonia can be associated with fluid in the chest – this is called parapneumonic effusion. The fluid can be simple and not infected (simple parapneumonic effusion) or can progress to become infected with bacteria (pleural infection). We know that patients with pleural infection are more likely to ... READ MORE

Longer than necessary antibiotic courses in patients with sepsis (an infection of the blood) may lead to side-effects like C diff diarrhoea, and increase antibiotic resistance. But not switching antibiotics promptly when patients don’t respond or get worse is harmful. In hospital, lots of blood ... READ MORE

Around half of all women will suffer from at least one urinary tract infection (UTI) in their lifetime, and it is the most common bacterial infection treated by General Practitioners (GPs). Up to 800,000 women in the UK suffer from frequent UTIs each year. Such ‘recurrent UTI’ causes painful and ... READ MORE

Acute exacerbations of asthma are often triggered by airways infection and a proportion of these infections are due to bacteria. We know that a group of patients with asthma have chronic airways infection with Haemophilus influenzae and this may be related to poor symptom control and more frequent ... READ MORE

Routinely collected electronic health record data is increasingly being used as a fast and inexpensive way to investigate different diseases. Often these diseases are identified by “diagnostic codes” which are assigned to every admission to hospital, either as the primary code (“the main condition ... READ MORE

Cellulitis is a bacterial infection of the skin and most commonly affects the legs where the affected area becomes red, hot, swollen and painful. Approximately 1000 patients are admitted to Oxford hospitals with cellulitis each year. Cellulitis is treated with antibiotics, given through the vein ... READ MORE

Patients are usually defined by their clinical symptoms, for example pneumonia as opposed to bronchitis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, scientists are starting to work out that sometimes the same underlying problem can lead to different clinical presentations. One example ... READ MORE

The Sepsis Trust estimates that 44,000 people in the UK die every year from sepsis, and this is currently the focus of much attention in hospitals and the media. “Sepsis” is generally used to mean an infection of the blood – where bugs get into the blood and cause high temperature, low pulse, low ... READ MORE

The Sepsis Trust estimates that 44,000 people in the UK die every year from sepsis. However, exactly where these estimates come from, and how reliable they are is unclear. “Sepsis” is generally used to mean an infection of the blood – where bugs get into the blood and cause high temperature, low ... READ MORE

In 2008 guidance recommended no longer using antibiotics to prevent people getting infections of the heart after having surgery at their dentists. This was because there was no strong evidence showing this was necessary, and to reduce overall use of antibiotics to avoid increasing antibiotic ... READ MORE

Newborns differ a great deal in terms of their size at birth. In particular, their weight, length and head circumference are determined by how well they have grown in the womb and their age at birth, i.e. premature babies are smaller than babies born at term. We seek to understand whether these ... READ MORE

Summary of findings: In this project, we looked at the hospital database of all people admitted to hospital, and found that admissions for pneumonia had almost tripled over the space of 15 years, an alarming increase. By looking at different types of data available in IORD, it became clear that ... READ MORE

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