Investigating food insecurity, health lifestyles, and self-rated health of older Canadians living alone.

Background And Objectives: There is a large number of older of this demographic fact. Although many studies have investigated the association between living arrangements and health, little is known about potential underlying mechanisms regarding how living alone may predict older Canadians' health. In this study, we address this research gap intending to contribute to offering policy suggestions for older Canadians who live alone.

Transformation of Sequential Hospital and Outpatient Laboratory Data into Between-Day Reference Change Values.

Background: Serial differences between intrapatient consecutive measurements can be transformed into Taylor series of variation vs time with the intersection at time = 0 (y0) equal to the total variation (analytical + biological + preanalytical). With small preanalytical variation, y0, expressed as a percentage of the mean, is equal to the variable component of the reference change value (RCV) calculation: (CVA2 + CVI2)1/2.

Methods: We determined the between-day RCV of patient data for 17 analytes and compared them to healthy participants' RCVs.

Remote ischaemic conditioning in ST elevation myocardial infarction: a registry-based randomised trial.

Objectives: Remote ischaemic conditioning (RIC) has been tested as a possible strategy for mitigating reperfusion injury in ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). However, surrogate outcomes have shown inconsistent effects with lack of clinical correlation.

Methods: We performed a registry-based randomised study of patients with STEMI allocated to RIC (4 cycles of blood pressure cuff inflation to 200 mm Hg for 5 min of ischaemia followed by 5 min of reperfusion) or standard of care (SOC) during PPCI.

Intellectual Structure of Coronavirus Research: A Perspective From an Author Cocitation Analysis.

The present study examines the intellectual structure of research on coronavirus, as revealed from an author co-citation analysis using citation data retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection and mapped to the PubMed database. Four major dimensions are identified: I) outbreaks, II) viral structure and function, III) vaccine and therapeutic development, and IV) coronaviruses found in a range of animals. The "outbreaks" dimension is by far the most prominent, dominated by reports on the three recent major outbreaks: COVID-19, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Five-Year Two-Center Retrospective Comparison of Central Laboratory Glucose to GEM 4000 and ABL 800 Blood Glucose: Demonstrating the (In)adequacy of Blood Gas Glucose.

Purpose: To evaluate the glucose assays of two blood gas analyzers (BGAs) in intensive care unit (ICU) patients by comparing ICU BGA glucoses to central laboratory (CL) glucoses of almost simultaneously drawn specimens.

Methods: Data repositories provided five years of ICU BGA glucoses and contemporaneously drawn CL glucoses from a Calgary, Alberta ICU equipped with IL GEM 4000 and CL Roche Cobas 8000-C702, and an Edmonton, Alberta ICU equipped with Radiometer ABL 800 and CL Beckman-Coulter DxC. Blood glucose analyzer and CL glucose differences were evaluated if they were both drawn either within ±15 or ±5 minutes.

Impaired clinical utility of sequential patient GEM blood gas measurements associated with calibration schedule.

Background: Within- and/or between-instrument variation may falsely indicate patient trends or obscure real trends. We employ a methodology that transforms sequential intra-patient results into estimates of biologic and analytic variation. We previously derived realistic biologic variation (s) of blood gas (BG) and hematology analytes.