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Background: One in two ventral and incisional hernia repair (VIHR) patients have preoperative opioid prescription within a year before procedure. The study's aim was to investigate risk factors of increased postoperative prescription filling in patients with or without preoperative opioid prescription., Methods: VIHR cases from 2013 to 2017 were reviewed. State prescription drug monitoring program data were linked to patient records. The primary endpoint was cumulative opioid dose dispensed through post-discharge day 45. Morphine milligram equivalent (MME) was used for uniform comparison., Results: 205 patients were included in the study (average age 53.5 years; 50.7% female). Over 35% met criteria for preoperative opioid use. Preoperative opioid tolerance, superficial wound infection, current smoking status, and any dispensed opioids within 45 days of admission were independent predictors for increased postoperative opioid utilization (p < 0.001)., Conclusion: Preoperative opioid use during 45-day pre-admission correlated strongly with postoperative prescription filling in VIHR patients, and several independent risk factors were identified., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Background: Identification of effective implementation strategies for motor vehicle injury prevention law is an important priority for research in public health law and policy. Extensive literature in related fields demonstrates the relationship between enforcement activities and achievement of safety objectives., Purpose: We conducted this study to determine the role of enforcement and adjudication in the implementation of a primary safety belt law, including the level and sustainability of safety belt-related conviction rates, using newly available data from the state judicial administrative authority. A secondary goal was to assess the contribution of the administrative data set to the analysis of the primary safety belt law., Methods: The analysis used an interrupted time series design to evaluate the longitudinal effect of the primary safety belt law implementation in 2007 on safety belt infractions and convictions in Kentucky, 2003-2012. Segmented regression analysis was used to estimate changes in the level and trend of safety belt nonuse conviction rate after the full implementation of the law, while controlling for the baseline level and trend. The association between the safety belt-related conviction rates and other expected outcomes of the law's implementation was studied., Results: Safety belt citations doubled and convictions nearly tripled during the decade studied, most dramatically in the first year. Increases were sustained throughout the study period. There was a strong positive linear association between the safety belt nonuse conviction rate and the observed safety belt use in the state, as well as a strong negative association between the safety belt nonuse conviction rate and the number of nonrestrained motor vehicle crash fatalities., Discussion: Our analysis demonstrates that Kentucky's public safety and judicial systems took the new law seriously and enforced it effectively and that the increased level of enforcement persisted for at least 5 years after implementation. We also find that data from judicial system administrative agency reports make an important contribution to public policy analysis. In the face of persistent antiregulatory forces and public-sector budget cuts, it is critically important to document the relationship between enforcement activities and the achievement of legislative goals.

This paper considers the use of additional questions for decreasing survey non-response rates and an approach for estimating a probability based on the results obtained. In a survey, the respondents are asked to answer an original question and follow-up questions, where the answers for the follow-up questions are grouped answers for the original question. For example, respondents are asked to provide an exact number of incidents, but in cases of 'Do not know' or 'Refuse' responses, they are subsequently asked to pick an answer from a less specific categorical scale. The new estimator obtains smaller variance asymptotically and does not depend on a distribution family. This method is applied to income questions in a survey regarding injury prevention and behaviours. Another application is survey data on intimate partner violence, where some amendments were applied for incorporating post-stratification weights and for using non-random grouping. For additional illustration, an example of parameter estimation on artificially generated data is presented., (c 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)