Frailty among older surgical patients and risk of hospital acquired adverse events: The South-Western Sydney frailty and nurse sensitive indicators study.

Background: While advances in healthcare mean people are living longer, increasing frailty is a potential consequence of this. The relationship between frailty among older surgical patients and hospital acquired adverse events has not been extensively explored. We sought to describe the relationship between increasing frailty among older surgical patients and the risk of hospital acquired adverse events.

An introduction to Bayes' theorem and examples of its application to a diagnostic test and a clinical trial.

Background: The Bayesian approach to updating scientific knowledge involves using a probability distribution to describe a prior belief concerning an outcome of interest and combines this with some new information to create a posterior probability distribution to describe the updated current knowledge.

Aim: To introduce the application of Bayes' theorem, using the conditional probability example of the Monty Hall problem and two examples of the clinical application of a Bayesian approach.

Discussion: Bayesian approaches enable the incorporation of prior knowledge into the interpretation of research findings and summaries of evidence to date.

Effects of nutritional status on hormone concentrations of the somatotropin axis and metabolites in plasma and colostrum of Japanese Black cows.

We aimed to determine the effects of nutritional status on concentrations of somatotropic axis hormones (growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1)), insulin and metabolites (glucose, total protein and nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA)) in the plasma and colostrum in late antepartum cows. Eight pregnant Japanese Black cows were randomly assigned to two experimental groups (n = 4 per group). Control cows (CON) received 100% of their nutritional requirements until parturition, whereas restricted group cows (RES) received 60% of their nutritional requirements.