Which unmet social care needs have the biggest impact on healthy ageing? An analysis of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

Background And Aim: Unmet need for social care is linked to numerous adverse health outcomes. Understanding which unmet needs have the biggest impact on healthy ageing could help resource-stretched services prioritise care. To address this evidence gap, our analysis aimed to explore the association between selected individual unmet care needs and an indicator of healthy ageing.

Closing the life expectancy gap: An ecological study of the factors associated with smaller regional health inequalities in post-reunification Germany.

Regional health inequalities are rising globally. The case of German reunification offers a unique opportunity to explore how such inequalities can be reduced, or even eliminated: following reunification, a long-standing life expectancy gap between East and West Germany was closed for women and markedly reduced for men in less than 15 years. We used data from official national statistics covering the period 1994-2020 for 15 regions in East and West Germany.

Is it possible to identify populations experiencing material disadvantage in primary care? A feasibility study using the Clinical Practice Research Database.

Background: Material disadvantage is associated with poor health, but commonly available area-based metrics provide a poor proxy for it. We investigate if a measure of material disadvantage could be constructed from UK primary care electronic health records.

Methods: Using data from Clinical Practice Research Datalink Aurum (May 2022) linked to the 2019 English Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), we sought to (1) identify codes that signified material disadvantage, (2) aggregate these codes into a binary measure of material disadvantage and (3) compare the proportion of people with this binary measure against IMD quintiles for validation purposes.

"Successful" ageing in later older age: A sociology of class and ageing in place.

Supporting people to 'age in place' - to live independently at home and remain connected to the community - is an international policy priority. But the process of ageing in place is mediated in a socio-cultural context where neoliberal tropes of successful ageing reproduce a pervasive model about 'ageing well' by elevating ideals of individualised choice and self-governance. Based on two waves of qualitative interviews and interim observations, we employ a Bourdieusian logic to explore the ramifications of this context on the experiences of 46 people in later older age (80+) ageing in place in North East England.

Automatic identification of ablation targets in persistent atrial fibrillation: Initial experience with a new mapping tool.

Introduction: Strategies beyond pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) in persistent atrial fibrillation (persAF) are debated. A novel mapping tool provides algorithmic detection of ablation targets based on electrogram (EGM) properties specific to stable localized rotational activations.

Methods: The mapping tool was used on 31 patients (20 de novo).