Publications by authors named "Oscar C Marroquin"

Article Synopsis
  • The study examined statin prescription rates and their impact on outcomes for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) in a large health care system, focusing on differences between Black and White patients.
  • Results showed that significantly fewer Black patients were prescribed statins compared to White patients, which was linked to increased ASCVD risks for both groups, though the race interaction was not a significant factor for ASCVD events.
  • Overall, the findings highlight that statins are underprescribed, and while disparities exist in prescription rates, they did not correlate directly with higher mortality risk among the studied populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A retrospective cohort study evaluated the relationship between low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels and long-term mortality in primary prevention-type adults aged 50-89 who were not on statin therapy.
  • The study found a U-shaped relationship, where both low (<80 mg/dL) and high (≥190 mg/dL) LDL-C levels were associated with increased mortality, while moderate levels (80-99 mg/dL) appeared to be protective.
  • Other cholesterol measures, such as total cholesterol to HDL and triglycerides to HDL ratios, were also found to be independently associated with long-term mortality, suggesting a complex relationship with cardiovascular risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Implementation of enhanced recovery pathways (ERPs) has resulted in improved patient-centred outcomes and decreased costs. However, there is a lack of high-level evidence for many ERP elements. We have designed a randomised, embedded, multifactorial, adaptive platform perioperative medicine (REMAP Periop) trial to evaluate the effectiveness of several perioperative therapies for patients undergoing complex abdominal surgery as part of an ERP.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this study, we sought to determine the effect of implementing a large-scale discharge follow-up phone call program on hospital readmission rates. Previous work has shown that patients with unaddressed concerns during discharge have significantly higher rates of care complications and hospital readmissions. This study is an observational quality improvement project completed from April 17, 2020 to January 31, 2022 at 22 hospitals in a large, integrated academic health system.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Posterior uveitis is an eye condition that can affect anyone and is often a reason people visit eye doctors.
  • It can be caused by infections, autoimmune diseases, and some conditions that look like uveitis but aren’t really it, which makes it tricky to diagnose.
  • This study looked at different types of uveitis and their confusing similarities to other diseases to help doctors better recognize and treat these eye problems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Goals of care conversations can promote high value care for patients with serious illness, yet documented discussions infrequently occur in hospital settings.

Objectives: We sought to develop a quality improvement initiative to improve goals of care documentation for hospitalized patients.

Methods: Implementation occurred at an academic medical center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Identifying patients at high risk of adverse outcomes prior to surgery may allow for interventions associated with improved postoperative outcomes; however, few tools exist for automated prediction.

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of an automated machine-learning model in the identification of patients at high risk of adverse outcomes from surgery using only data in the electronic health record.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This prognostic study was conducted among 1 477 561 patients undergoing surgery at 20 community and tertiary care hospitals in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) health network.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Treatment guidelines and U.S. Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorizations (EUAs) of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) for treatment of high-risk outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19 changed frequently as different SARS-CoV-2 variants emerged.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: To examine the association between COVID-19 Shutdown and within-subjects changes in body weight, body mass index (BMI), and glycemic parameters using electronic health record (EHR) data from 23,000 adults with type 2 diabetes (T2DM).

Methods: Patients with T2DM with outpatient visit data on body weight, BMI, hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), and blood glucose (≥ 2 measures before and after 3/16/2020) recorded in the EHR at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center were included. A within-subjects analysis compared average and clinically significant changes in weight, BMI, HbA1c, and blood glucose during the year POST-Shutdown (Time 2-3) compared to the same interval during the PRE-Shutdown year (Time 0-1) using paired samples t-tests and the McNemar-Bowker test.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Monoclonal antibody (mAb) treatment is associated with decreased risk of hospitalization and death in high-risk outpatients with mild to moderate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by early severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants. Bebtelovimab exhibits in vitro activity against the Omicron variant and its sublineages; however, clinical data are lacking.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted comparing bebtelovimab-treated patients with propensity score-adjusted and matched nontreated control groups.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Healthcare utilization after bronchiolitis hospitalization is incompletely understood. We aimed to characterize readmissions and outpatient visits within 1 year after hospital discharge.

Methods: Retrospective multicenter observational cohort study of children under 24-months old admitted with bronchiolitis between January 1, 2010 and December 12, 2019 to the Pediatric Health Information Systems database.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Rapid, continuous implementation of credible scientific findings and regulatory approvals is often slow in large, diverse health systems. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic created a new threat to this common "slow to learn and adapt" model in healthcare. We describe how the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) committed to a rapid learning health system (LHS) model to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: The effectiveness of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), casirivimab-imdevimab and sotrovimab, is unknown in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of mAb against the Delta variant compared with no mAb treatment and to ascertain the comparative effectiveness of casirivimab-imdevimab and sotrovimab.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This study comprised 2 parallel studies: (1) a propensity score-matched cohort study of mAb treatment vs no mAb treatment and (2) a randomized comparative effectiveness trial of casirivimab-imdevimab and sotrovimab.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: We used SARS-CoV-2 whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and electronic health record (EHR) data to investigate the associations between viral genomes and clinical characteristics and severe outcomes among hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Methods: We conducted a case-control study of severe COVID-19 infection among patients hospitalized at a large academic referral hospital between March 2020 and May 2021. SARS-CoV-2 WGS was performed, and demographic and clinical characteristics were obtained from the EHR.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This cohort study assesses mean changes in weight and body mass index in adults during the years before and after stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) like bamlanivimab, bamlanivimab-etesevimab, and casirivimab-imdevimab are effective in reducing hospitalization and death in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19, but their comparative effectiveness is unclear.
  • In a trial involving 1,935 patients, each mAb treatment resulted in a median of 28 hospital-free days, with very low mortality rates across the treatments.
  • The analysis showed that bamlanivimab was likely inferior to the other two treatments, while bamlanivimab-etesevimab and casirivimab-imdevimab were statistically similar.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Monoclonal antibody (mAb) treatment decreases hospitalization and death in high-risk outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19; however, only intravenous administration has been evaluated in randomized clinical trials of treatment. Subcutaneous administration may expand outpatient treatment capacity and qualified staff available to administer treatment, but the association with patient outcomes is understudied.

Objectives: To evaluate whether subcutaneous casirivimab and imdevimab treatment is associated with reduced 28-day hospitalization and death compared with nontreatment among mAb-eligible patients and whether subcutaneous casirivimab and imdevimab treatment is clinically and statistically similar to intravenous casirivimab and imdevimab treatment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To describe the demographic characteristics of patients who used telemedicine and office visits in physical medicine and rehabilitation during the COVID-19 pandemic and to quantify differences in clinical utilization between groups. Clinical utilization was defined as emergency department, urgent care, and hospital visits.

Design: This was a retrospective cohort study of 1096 patients who used telemedicine and 1171 patients who used office visits from April to June 2020 in the outpatient physical medicine and rehabilitation clinics at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for musculoskeletal-related complaints.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Incidence of breast cancer (BC) in US women continues to increase with age as the strongest risk factor. We aimed to compare clinical, pathological and sociological variables associated to BC diagnosis, as well as the relative mortality rates of BC patients compared to the general US population.

Methods: We performed a retrospective, single-institution study evaluating 52,509 patients diagnosed with unilateral BC at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) between 1990-2020.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Age is a big risk factor for getting breast cancer, especially for women over 70.
  • Most older women with breast cancer have a type called oestrogen receptor-positive (ER+), which tends to be slower-growing and less likely to cause serious problems.
  • Researchers are looking into better ways to detect and treat ER+ breast cancer in older women, focusing on safe treatments that could improve their lives while reducing the impact of cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Outpatient treatments that limit progression to severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are of vital importance to optimise patient outcomes and public health. Monoclonal antibodies (mAb) demonstrated ability to decrease hospitalizations in randomized, clinical trials. However, there are many barriers to mAb treatment such as patient access and clinician education.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Surgical risk stratified outcomes after contemporary revascularization strategies have not been well described. We report these outcomes in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) for multivessel coronary disease.

Methods: A total of 5836 patients with multivessel disease who underwent CABG (n = 4420) or PCI (n = 1416) were included in this retrospective observational analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy can improve coronavirus disease 2019 outcomes when infused early in select patients. We sought to rapidly create and implement a program for emergency department (ED) mAb infusion to aid care. Using multiple strategies and actions-education, selection criteria, screening tools, rapid testing, compounding, and delivery-we infused 832 ED patients with a mAb.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF