With forethought, many of the difficulties we encountered may have been avoidable.
As such, much of the antibiotic use documented in this study may have been avoidable.
People with advanced disease may require considerable health care resources that may have been avoidable in part through the optimal consumption of preventative services.
If the increases in adenocarcinoma seen in our analyses are the result of changes in cigarette design over the past several decades, they may have been avoidable.
Among IHSS recipients who were hospitalized at least once, 29% were hospitalized for an ambulatory care sensitive condition (i.e., a health condition for which hospitalization may have been avoidable if the patient had obtained appropriate outpatient care (Newcomer and Kang, 2008).
We have also heard that patients are admitted when they appear in emergency departments with these issues as they have not been able to access professionals to assess and problem solve during nights and weekends.[ 7] Therefore, some late admissions are entirely appropriate and others may have been avoidable if more resources were available to patients and families at home.
Non-adherence to therapeutic regimens is associated with a reduction in treatment benefit [ 5] resulting in additional health service costs through changes to prescribed medication requiring additional follow-up of efficacy, wastage of unfinished pharmaceutical supplies, or the costs of surgery that may have been avoidable [ 6].
What makes the incident most unfortunate, and in truth, more fascinating, is that it all may have been totally avoidable.
In addition, the frequent use of paralytics (in up to 50% of steroid treated participants) and marked hyperglycemia (mean values in excess of 200 mg/dl) may have contributed to avoidable complications of steroid therapy.
Therefore, and as our findings are based on a complete case analysis, the true potential for avoidable deaths may have been under-estimated.
