Sarcoidosis: a prospective observational cohort from Northern Alberta.

Introduction: Sarcoidosis is a multi-system disease reported to occur with a higher incidence in Alberta than many other health jurisdictions within and outside of Canada. The reasons for this higher incidence are currently not known. Exposure to beryllium can result in a clinically and radiologically identical disease to sarcoidosis.

Psychiatric co-morbidity and asthma: A pilot study utilizing a free use tool to improve asthma care.

Purpose: To assess the prevalence of co-morbid psychiatric disorders in asthmatic patients in a Western Canadian Regional Severe Asthma Center.

Methods: A prospective study was completed of patients evaluated through the Edmonton Regional Severe Asthma Clinic (ERSAC). A standardised evaluation, the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) screen was used to identify possible psychiatric disorders.

Routine use of post-bronchodilator testing in pulmonary function testing labs.

Purpose: Pulmonary function tests (PFTs), including spirometry with and without post-bronchodilator (post-BD) testing, are frequently performed in the assessment of asthma, along with other obstructive airway disorders. Multiple publications over the past 15 years have noted that one in three physician-diagnosed asthma cases are not in fact asthma. In this quality assurance project, we assess whether PFT labs in Alberta have policies on post-BD testing, as extraneous and unnecessary use of post-BD testing can lead to wasted staff and patient time and unnecessary expenses to the health care system.

Neural network explanation using inversion.

An important drawback of many artificial neural networks (ANN) is their lack of explanation capability [Andrews, R., Diederich, J., & Tickle, A.