Further testing indicated that the patient daily living item was positively correlated with the Resource Utilisation Groups Activities Entinostat clinical trial of Daily Living (r = 0.74) and negatively correlated with the Australian Karnofsky Performance Scale (r = 0.84). Prevalence- and bias-adjusted kappa values also indicated adequate agreement between Palliative Care Problem Severity Score items and the patient physical item (0.48), psychological item (0.45) and caregiver well-being item (0.42).\n\nConclusions: Needs assessment not only facilitates the identification of people who have specific concerns or are dissatisfied with some aspect of their care,

hut also determines the person’s desire for assistance and involvement with services. The NAT is a highly acceptable and efficient tool that can be used by health professionals with a range of clinical expertise to identify individuals’ needs, thereby enabling a better match of interventions of specialist services more closely linked to needs. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.”
“Background: A prospective, longitudinal analysis of injuries sustained by a large combat-deployed maneuver unit has not been previously performed.\n\nMethods: A detailed description of the

combat casualty care statistics, distribution of IKK inhibitor wounds, and mechanisms of injury incurred by a U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team during “The Surge” phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom was performed using a centralized casualty database and an electronic medical record BTSA1 system.\n\nResults: Among the 4,122 soldiers deployed, there were 500 combat wounds in 390 combat casualties. The combat casualty rate for the Brigade Combat Team was 75.7 per 1,000 soldier combat-years. The % killed

in action (KIA) was 22.1%, and the %died of wounds was 3.2%. The distribution of these wounds was as follows: head/neck 36.2%, thorax 7.5%, abdomen 6.9%, and extremities 49.4%. The percentage of combat wounds showed a significant increase in the head/neck region (p < 0.0001) and a decrease in the extremities (p < 0.03) compared with data from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The percentage of thoracic wounds (p < 0.03) was significantly less than historical data from World War 11 and Vietnam. The %KIA was significantly greater in those soldiers injured by an explosion (26.3%) compared with those soldiers injured by a gunshot wound (4.6%; p = 0.003). Improvised explosive devices accounted for 77.7% of all combat wounds.\n\nConclusions: There was a significantly higher proportion of head/neck wounds compared with previous U.S. conflicts. The 22.1% KIA was comparable with previous U.S. conflicts despite improvements in individual/vehicular body armor and is largely attributable to the lethality of improvised explosive devices. The lethality of a gunshot wound in Operation Iraqi Freedom has decreased to 4.6% with the use of individual body armor.