Kristen Westfall

Saint Joseph Mercy Health System · Department of Surgery

Antiplatelet agents have been shown to worsen outcomes following traumatic injury. Research on desmopressin (DDAVP) and platelet transfusion for antiplatelet reversal is limited. We aimed to evaluate the effect of these agents on patients taking pre-injury antiplatelet medications who experienced traumatic brain injury (TBI) after blunt trauma. Thi...

BACKGROUND Ileostomies constitute 15-43% of readmissions after colorectal surgery, often due to dehydration and acute kidney injury. Prior institutional interventions decreased readmissions but not among patients with new ileostomies. OBJECTIVE Evaluate readmissions among patients with new ileostomies following postoperative oral rehydration solut...

Background Alvimopan is a µ-opioid receptor antagonist associated with shorter time to gastrointestinal recovery in patients having open colorectal surgery. Data demonstrating the benefit of perioperative alvimopan for the minimally invasive surgical approach are inconsistent. The aim of this study is to determine colorectal surgery groups that ben...

A 33-year-old man with a history of chronic alcohol use, generalized anxiety disorder, and hypertension presented to the emergency department after a syncopal event. He was admitted to the medical intensive care unit for alcohol withdrawal, requiring intubation and sedation. On hospital day 7, abdominal x-ray image demonstrated a dilated cecum to 1...

Background Thomboelastography (TEG) is a point of care viscoelastic test that provides an assessment of clot formation and kinetics. Antiplatelet agents are commonly used but there is limited literature evaluating their possible effects on overall clot kinetics. We aimed to evaluate the relationship between antiplatelet agents and clot kinetics as...

A 60-year-old woman with remote history of sleeve gastrectomy presented with altered mental status after an unwitnessed fall. She was found to be hypothermic with lactic acidaemia, leucocytosis, positive urinalysis, and dilated ascending and transverse colon on cross-sectional imaging, initially thought to be secondary to faecal loading. She was ad...

Introduction: The classic findings of acute appendicitis-right lower quadrant pain, anorexia, and leukocytosis-have been well known. However, emergency medicine and surgical providers continue to rely on imaging to confirm the diagnosis. We aimed to evaluate the increase in reliance on computed tomography (CT) scans for acute appendicitis diagnosi...

Prompt appendectomy has long been the standard of care for acute appendicitis because of the risk of progression to perforation. Recently, studies have suggested nonemergent management of acute appendicitis. Our study aimed to determine changes in risk of rupture and complications in patients with appendicitis, with increasing time from symptom ons...

Prompt appendectomy has long been the standard of care for acute appendicitis because of the risk of progression to perforation. Recently, studies have suggested nonemergent management of acute appendicitis. Our study aimed to determine changes in risk of rupture and complications in patients with appendicitis, with increasing time from symptom ons...

One potential harm of nonoperative management for acute appendicitis is missed appendiceal cancer, a rare and often aggressive malignancy due to the frequency of late stage of diagnosis. Previous studies have reported an increasing incidence of appendiceal neoplasms in the population. This is a retrospective case-control study of 1007 adult patient...

Background: Cancer patients have a high rate of emergency department (ED) visits and inpatient hospitalizations (IHs) that may be reduced by use of outpatient palliative care services. Objective: To determine whether the outpatient adult palliative care service at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Hospital, begun in 2008, reduced the freque...

Current strategies fail to identify most patients with esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) before the disease becomes advanced and incurable. Given the dismal prognosis associated with EAC, improvements in detection of early-stage esophageal neoplasia are needed. We sought to assess whether differential expression of microRNAs could discriminate betwee...