Routine childhood vaccination rates in an academic family health team before and during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: a pre-post analysis of a retrospective chart review.

Background: There has been concern about declining routine vaccination rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early childhood vaccination rates at 2 sites of an academic family health team in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, serving both an urban and suburban patient population.

Methods: We conducted a pre-post analysis of vaccination records from Jan.

Telehealth challenges during COVID-19 as reported by primary healthcare physicians in Quebec and Massachusetts.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has driven primary healthcare (PHC) providers to use telehealth as an alternative to traditional face-to-face consultations. Providing telehealth that meets the needs of patients in a pandemic has presented many challenges for PHC providers. The aim of this study was to describe the positive and negative implications of using telehealth in one Canadian (Quebec) and one American (Massachusetts) PHC setting during the COVID-19 pandemic as reported by physicians.

Functional outcomes assessment following free muscle transfer for dynamic reconstruction of facial paralysis: A literature review.

Facial reanimation provides patients affected by chronic facial paralysis a chance to regain basic human functions such as emotional expression, verbal communication, and oral competence for eating and swallowing, but there is still no consensus as to the best way to measure surgical outcomes. We performed a literature review to investigate the different functional outcomes that surgeons use to evaluate facial function after reanimation surgery, focusing on outcomes other than facial expressions such as speech, oral competence, and patient quality of life/satisfaction. A total of 37 articles were reviewed, with the majority reporting outcomes through subjective facial expression ratings and only 15 dealing with other functional outcomes.

A novel sensory nerve conduction study technique to evaluate the sural nerve from the forefoot to the knee.

Purpose: Length-dependent polyneuropathy is common. Current electrophysiological methods cannot assess sensory nerve function proximal to the distal calf, limiting their utility in the quantification of severity of length-dependent polyneuropathy.

Methods: The authors developed a novel electrophysiological approach for distal to proximal assessment of the sural nerve between the forefoot and the knee and tested it on 63 healthy young, middle-aged, and old adults.