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Background: Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) after prior knee surgery, also known as conversion TKA (convTKA), has been associated with higher complications, resource utilization, time, and effort. The increased surgical complexity of convTKA may not be reflected by the relative value units (RVUs) assigned under the current U.S. coding guidelines. The purpose of this study was to compare the RVUs of primary TKA and convTKA and to calculate the RVU per minute to account for work effort. Methods: The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project (NSQIP) database was analyzed for the years 2005 to 2020. Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code 27447 alone was used to identify patients who underwent primary TKA, and 27447 plus 20680 were used to identify convTKA. After 1:1 propensity score matching, 1,600 cases were assigned to each cohort. The 2023 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule RVU-to-dollar conversion factor from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) was used to calculate RVU dollar valuations per operative time. Complication rates were compared using a multivariate logistic regression model controlling for baseline characteristics. Results: The mean operative time for TKA was 97.8 minutes, with a corresponding RVU per minute of 0.25, while the mean operative time for convTKA was 124.3 minutes, with an RVU per minute of 0.19 (p < 0.0001). Using the conversion factor of $33.06 per RVU, this equated to $8.11 per minute for TKA versus $6.39 per minute for convTKA. ConvTKA was associated with higher overall complication (10.9% versus 6.5%, p < 0.0001), blood transfusion (6.6% versus 3.7%, p < 0.01), reoperation (2.3% versus 0.94%, p < 0.0001), and readmission (3.7% versus 1.8%, p < 0.001) rates. Conclusions: The current billing guidelines lead to lower compensation for convTKA despite its increased complexity. The longer operative time, higher complication rate, and increased resource utilization may incentivize providers to avoid performing this operation. CPT code revaluation is warranted to reflect the time and effort associated with this procedure. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic Level III. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antibiotics are a routine part of everyday life in many contexts, contributing to the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Our ethnographic research documents the ways that antibiotics have become a key part of everyday life for precariously employed urban day-wage workers living in a large informal settlement in Kampala, Uganda. We found that for many people, their daily work and ongoing health was entangled with antibiotic use; that is, people showed us how their antibiotic use cannot be separated from the realities of living in a politically, economically and environmentally degraded 'informal' landscape. Thinking through entanglement as itself a politics, we show how limited political power, inability to demand change, and inequitable access to good health care, are associated with high rates of infection and disease, precarious work, and polluted environments. Antibiotics, we argue, have become a way to negotiate the inequalities written into these informal urban landscapes; their use entangled with ongoing relations with labour, environment and bodily suffering. Through this approach, we show how antimicrobials are used in society, with an attention to how vulnerabilities, risks, and forms of abandonment and exclusion shape their everyday use. Antibiotic use is entangled with everyday life in informal settlements, and the politics that produce 'informality'. In Kampala today, the entanglement of antibiotics with life in informal settlements reveals how forms of urban segregation, life in 'slums' and their everyday acceptance, shape the pathways and uses of antimicrobials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Wetland Trust constructed a 1400 m long pest exclusion fence around a 11 hectare site at Rotopiko and all mammals except mice have been eradicated from inside the fenced area. Since the completion of the pest proof fence, the number of roosting birds has increased dramatically. By removing mammalian pests, an unexpected sanctuary has been created for communal roosting birds such as starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) and sparrows (Passer domesticus). There is growing concern about the large amounts of bird faeces produced each day and the associated nutrient load particularly as the pest fence encircles a low nutrient peat lake. In this study two methods were developed for estimating the relative abundance of the large roosting congregation, based on (1) gridded plates for gathering guano and (2) the acoustic energy of the roost cacophony. The results showed that these methods were suitable for measuring the characteristics of the roosting community at multiple scales. For example, large variance in the abundance of roosting and diurnal birds, and minor changes in the roosting community according to seasonal fluctuations. The methods could support the management of the issue through being applied to assess and quantify the relative efficacy of preventive or control methods deployed to reduce the number of exotic birds. The findings of this study are site specific; however, the guano plates and sound recorders could be implemented to estimate large bird numbers at other sites facing a roosting bird problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article and the related Feature Topic at Organizational Research Methods upcoming were motivated by the concern that despite the bourgeoning number and diversity of review articles, there was a lack of guidance on how to produce rigorous and impactful literature reviews. In this article, we introduce review research as a class of research inquiries that uses prior research as data sources to develop knowledge contributions for academia, practice and policy. We first trace the evolution of review research both outside of and within management including the articles published in this Feature Topic, and provide a holistic definition of review research. Then, we argue that in the plurality of forms of review research, the alignment of purpose and methods is crucial for high-quality review research. To accomplish this, we discuss several review purposes and criteria for assessing review research's rigor and impact, and discuss how these and the review methods need to be aligned with its purpose. Our paper provides guidance for conducting or evaluating review research and helps establish review research as a credible and legitimate scientific endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]