Usual Care for Low Back Pain at United States Emergency Departments, 2016-2022.

Study Objectives: Low back pain is a common reason for visiting the emergency department (ED). Updated and reliable national estimates of usual care for low back pain are needed to identify research and quality improvement priorities to improve patient outcomes and reduce low-value emergency care.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey from 2016 to 2022.

The clinical epidemiology, management, and outcomes of patients diagnosed with encephalitis in North Carolina, 2015-2020.

Despite the relatively high mortality and the difficulty in diagnosis, nearly one-third of patients hospitalized with a documented diagnosis of encephalitis did not undergo a lumbar puncture (LP). When an LP was performed, pathogen-specific testing was greatly underutilized. Infectious etiologies were most common, but over 40% of cases were idiopathic at discharge.