Publications by authors named "Hugh Montgomery"

Article Synopsis
  • Anastomoses between pulmonary arteries and veins, which are common in adults, can lead to blood bypassing alveoli, causing hypoxaemia, especially in conditions like COVID-19 and influenza A.
  • A case of severe hypoxaemia linked to influenza A was poorly responsive to oxygen treatment and worsened with CPAP, indicating a significant intrapulmonary shunt contributing to the issue.
  • Understanding these shunts in viral infections can improve respiratory treatment strategies and help identify new therapeutic approaches to prevent the need for intubation.
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Purpose Of Review: Climate change is the biggest threat to human health and survival in the twenty-first century. Emissions associated with healthcare contribute to climate change and there are many personal and professional actions that can reduce carbon emissions. This review highlights why action is necessary and what anaesthetists and healthcare workers can do.

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Article Synopsis
  • The world is nearing the critical threshold of 1.5°C warming, with 2023 recording an average temperature rise of 1.45°C since pre-industrial times, leading to severe climate-related impacts.
  • The Countdown collaboration, formed to assess the health impacts of climate change post-Paris Agreement, involves over 300 experts analyzing data and trends annually.
  • The 2024 report highlights troubling increases in climate-related health risks, such as a staggering 167% rise in heat-related deaths among seniors, indicating worsening conditions affecting wellbeing globally.
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Importance: Supplementing potassium in an effort to maintain high-normal serum concentrations is a widespread strategy used to prevent atrial fibrillation after cardiac surgery (AFACS), but is not evidence-based, carries risks, and is costly.

Objective: To determine whether a lower serum potassium concentration trigger for supplementation is noninferior to a high-normal trigger.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This open-label, noninferiority, randomized clinical trial was conducted at 23 cardiac surgical centers in the United Kingdom and Germany.

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The importance of integrated care for complex, multiple long term conditions was acknowledged before the COVID pandemic but remained a challenge. The pandemic and consequent development of Long COVID required rapid adaptation of health services to address the population's needs, requiring service redesigns including integrated care. This Delphi consensus study was conducted in the UK and found similar integrated care priorities for Long COVID and complex, multiple long term conditions, provided by 480 patients and health care providers, with an 80% consensus rate.

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Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a post-infectious presentation SARS-CoV-2 associated with expansion of the T cell receptor Vβ21.3+ T-cell subgroup. Here we apply muti-single cell omics to compare the inflammatory process in children with acute respiratory COVID-19 and those presenting with non SARS-CoV-2 infections in children.

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Anthropogenic climate change is affecting people's health, including those with neurological and psychiatric diseases. Currently, making inferences about the effect of climate change on neurological and psychiatric diseases is challenging because of an overall sparsity of data, differing study methods, paucity of detail regarding disease subtypes, little consideration of the effect of individual and population genetics, and widely differing geographical locations with the potential for regional influences. However, evidence suggests that the incidence, prevalence, and severity of many nervous system conditions (eg, stroke, neurological infections, and some mental health disorders) can be affected by climate change.

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Article Synopsis
  • Breast cancer is a major global health issue, often leading to death due to metastatic disease, which can remain dormant for long periods before becoming active again.
  • Recent research shows that infections like influenza can trigger inflammatory responses that promote the growth of dormant breast cancer cells, leading to rapid cancer cell expansion in the lungs.
  • The study also highlights the role of immune cells in maintaining metastatic cancer after infection, and finds that cancer survivors who contract viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are at a significantly higher risk of cancer progression and death.
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Background: Atrial Fibrillation After Cardiac Surgery (AFACS) occurs in about one in three patients following Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG). It is associated with increased short- and long-term morbidity, mortality and costs. To reduce AFACS incidence, efforts are often made to maintain serum potassium in the high-normal range (≥ 4.

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Objective: Long COVID can include impaired cognition ('brain fog'; a term encompassing multiple symptoms) and mental health conditions. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate their prevalence and to explore relevant factors associated with the incidence of impaired cognition and mental health conditions.

Methods: Searches were conducted in Medline and PsycINFO to cover the start of the pandemic until August 2023.

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Introduction: In the phase 3 TACKLE study, outpatient treatment with AZD7442 (tixagevimab/cilgavimab) was well tolerated and significantly reduced progression to severe disease or death through day 29 in adults with mild-to-moderate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) at the primary analysis. Here, we report data from the final analysis of the TACKLE study, performed after approximately 15 months' follow-up.

Methods: Eligible participants were randomized 1:1 and dosed within 7 days of symptom onset with 600 mg intramuscular AZD7442 (n = 456; 300 mg tixagevimab/300 mg cilgavimab) or placebo (n = 454).

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The pathogenesis of exercise intolerance and persistent fatigue which can follow an infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus ("long COVID") is not fully understood. Cases were recruited from a long COVID clinic (N = 32; 44 ± 12 years; 10 (31%) men), and age-/sex-matched healthy controls (HC) (N = 19; 40 ± 13 years; 6 (32%) men) from University College London staff and students. We assessed exercise performance, lung and cardiac function, vascular health, skeletal muscle oxidative capacity, and autonomic nervous system (ANS) function.

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Unlabelled: The Countdown is an international research collaboration that independently monitors the evolving impacts of climate change on health, and the emerging health opportunities of climate action. In its eighth iteration, this 2023 report draws on the expertise of 114 scientists and health practitioners from 52 research institutions and UN agencies worldwide to provide its most comprehensive assessment yet. In 2022, the Countdown warned that people’s health is at the mercy of fossil fuels and stressed the transformative opportunity of jointly tackling the concurrent climate change, energy, cost-of-living, and health crises for human health and wellbeing.

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Introduction: AZD7442 (tixagevimab/cilgavimab) comprises neutralising monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that bind to distinct non-overlapping epitopes on the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein. Viral evolution during mAb therapy can select for variants with reduced neutralisation susceptibility. We examined treatment-emergent SARS-CoV-2 variants during TACKLE (NCT04723394), a phase 3 study of AZD7442 for early outpatient treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

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The 2022 European Society of Cardiology guidelines on cardiovascular assessment and management of patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery are intended for physicians involved in the perioperative care of patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery, in whom heart disease is a potential source of complications. While relevant and useful, the length of the guidelines may limit widespread reading. This article summarises the guidelines, highlighting the aspects most relevant to medical staff preparing patients for surgery.

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