Healthcare professional preferences in the health and fitness assessment and optimization of older patients facing colorectal cancer surgery.

Aim: There are few age- and fitness-specific, evidence-based guidelines for colorectal cancer surgery. The uptake of different assessment and optimization strategies is variable. The aim of this study was to explore healthcare professional opinion about these issues using a mixed methods design.

Protocol for a multi-centre observational and mixed methods pilot study to identify factors predictive of poor functional recovery after major gastrointestinal surgery and strategies to enhance uptake of perioperative optimization: Optimizing the care and treatment pathways for older patients facing major gastrointestinal surgery (OCTAGON).

Introduction: National datasets report large variations in outcomes from older people (≥65 years) between different UK surgical units. This implies that not all patients receive the same level of care or access to resources, such as rehabilitation or allied health professional input. This might impact functional decline.

Charge Density in Enzyme Active Site as a Descriptor of Electrostatic Preorganization.

Large protein macromolecules in enzymatic catalysis have been shown to exert a specific electric field that reduces the reorganization energy upon barrier crossing and thus reduces the reaction free energy barrier. In this work we suggest that the charge density in the active site of an enzyme investigated using formalisms embodied by the quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) provides a sensitive and quantum mechanically rigorous probe of electrostatic preorganization. We focus on the active site of ketosteroid isomerase, a well-studied enzyme for which electrostatic preorganization has been modeled theoretically and studied experimentally.