Methods: Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) approach to scoping reviews was used to identify appropriate publications featured in four databases published between 1 January 1990 and 31 December 2018. Seven members of the research team employed thematic analysis to evaluate the selected articles.
Results: 3799 abstracts were identified, 138 full-text articles reviewed and 74 studies included. The two themes identified were the context-specific nature of assessments and competency-based stages in medical professionalism.
Conclusions: Prevailing assessments of professionalism in medicine must contend with differences in setting, context and levels of professional development as these explicate variances found in existing assessment criteria and approaches. However, acknowledging the significance of context-specific competency-based stages in medical professionalism will allow the forwarding of guiding principles to aid the design of a culturally-sensitive and practical approach to assessing professionalism.
METHODS: We analyzed patients from the Adult Dengue Platelet Study with laboratory-confirmed dengue with ≤20 000 platelets/μL and without persistent mild bleeding or any severe bleeding in a post hoc analysis. Poor platelet recovery was defined as a platelet count of ≤20 000/μL on Day 2. We recruited 372 participants from 5 acute care hospitals located in Singapore and Malaysia between 29 April 2010 and 9 December 2014. Of these, 188 were randomly assigned to the transfusion group and 184 to the control group.
RESULTS: Of 360 patients, 158 had poor platelet recovery. Age, white cell count, and day of illness at study enrollment were significant predictors of poor platelet recovery after adjustment for baseline characteristics and platelet transfusion. Patients with poor platelet recovery had longer hospitalizations but no significant difference in other clinical outcomes, regardless of transfusion. We found a significant interaction between platelet recovery and transfusion; patients with poor platelet recovery were more likely to bleed if given a prophylactic platelet transfusion (odds ratio 2.34, 95% confidence interval 1.18-4.63).
CONCLUSIONS: Dengue patients with thrombocytopenia who were older or presented earlier and with lower white cell counts were more likely to have poor platelet recovery. In patients with poor platelet recovery, platelet transfusion does not improve outcomes and may actually increase the risk of bleeding. The mechanisms of poor platelet recovery need to be determined.
CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION: NCT01030211.