Infants and children born with CHD are at significant risk for neurodevelopmental delays and abnormalities. Individualised developmental care is widely recognised as best practice to support early neurodevelopment for medically fragile infants born premature or requiring surgical intervention after birth. However, wide variability in clinical practice is consistently demonstrated in units caring for infants with CHD. The Cardiac Newborn Neuroprotective Network, a Special Interest Group of the Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Outcome Collaborative, formed a working group of experts to create an evidence-based developmental care pathway to guide clinical practice in hospital settings caring for infants with CHD. The clinical pathway, “Developmental Care Pathway for Hospitalized Infants with Congenital Heart Disease,” includes recommendations for standardised developmental assessment, parent mental health screening, and the implementation of a daily developmental care bundle, which incorporates individualised assessments and interventions tailored to meet the needs of this unique infant population and their families. Hospitals caring for infants with CHD are encouraged to adopt this developmental care pathway and track metrics and outcomes using a quality improvement framework.

In most U.S. jurisdictions, clinicians providing informal “curbside” consults are protected from medical malpractice liability due to the absence of a doctor-patient relationship. A recent Minnesota Supreme Court case, Warren v. Dinter, offers the opportunity to reassess whether the majority rule is truly serving the best interests of patients.

Patients with single-ventricle CHD undergo a series of palliative surgeries that culminate in the Fontan procedure. While the Fontan procedure allows most patients to survive to adulthood, the Fontan circulation can eventually lead to multiple cardiac complications and multi-organ dysfunction. Care for adolescents and adults with a Fontan circulation has begun to transition from a primarily cardiac-focused model to care models, which are designed to monitor multiple organ systems, and using clues from this screening, identify patients who are at risk for adverse outcomes. The complexity of care required for these patients led our centre to develop a multidisciplinary Fontan Management Programme with the primary goals of earlier detection and treatment of complications through the development of a cohesive network of diverse medical subspecialists with Fontan expertise.

Introduction: Despite recent advances in resuscitation, some patients remain in ventricular fibrillation (VF) after multiple defibrillation attempts during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Vector change defibrillation (VC) and double sequential external defibrillation (DSED) have been proposed as alternate therapeutic strategies for OHCA patients with refractory VF. The primary objective was to determine the feasibility, safety and sample size required for a future cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) with crossover comparing VC or DSED to standard defibrillation for patients experiencing refractory VF. Secondary objectives were to evaluate the intervention effect on VF termination and return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). Methods: We conducted a pilot cluster RCT with crossover in four Canadian paramedic services and included all treated adult OHCA patients who presented in VF and received a minimum of three defibrillation attempts. In addition to standard cardiac arrest care, each EMS service was randomly assigned to provide continued standard defibrillation (control), VC or DSED. Services crossed over to an alternate defibrillation strategy after six months. Prior to the launch of the trial, 2,500 paramedics received in-person training for VC and DSED defibrillation using a combination of didactic, video and simulated scenarios. Results: Between March 2018 and September 2019, 152 patients were enrolled. Monthly enrollment varied from 1.4 to 6.1 cases per service. With respect to feasibility, 89.5% of cases received the defibrillation strategy they were randomly allocated to, and 93.1% of cases received a VC or DSED shock prior to the sixth defibrillation attempt. There were no reported cases of defibrillator malfunction, skin burns, difficulty with pad placement or concerns expressed by paramedics, patients, families, or ED staff about the trial. In the standard defibrillation group, 66.6% of cases resulted in VF termination, compared to 82.0% in VC and 76.3% of cases in the DSED group. ROSC was achieved in 25.0%, 39.3% and 40.0% of standard, VC and DSED groups, respectively. Conclusion: Findings from our pilot RCT suggest the DOSE VF protocol is feasible and safe. VF termination and ROSC were higher with VC and DSED compared to standard defibrillation. The results of this pilot trial will allow us to inform a multicenter cluster RCT with crossover to determine if alternate defibrillation strategies for refractory VF may impact patient-centered, clinical outcomes

Our recent discovery of hazardous concentrations of arsenic in shallow sedimentary aquifers in Cambodia raises the spectre of future deleterious health impacts on a population that, particularly in non-urban areas, extensively use untreated groundwater as a source of drinking water and, in some instances, as irrigation water. We present here small-scale hazard maps for arsenic in shallow Cambodian groundwaters based on >1000 groundwater samples analysed in the Manchester Analytical Geochemistry Unit and elsewhere. Key indicators for hazardous concentrations of arsenic in Cambodian groundwaters include: (1) well depths greater than 16 m; (2) Holocene host sediments; and (3) proximity to major modern channels of the Mekong (and its distributary the Bassac). However, high-arsenic well waters are also commonly found in wells not exhibiting these key characteristics, notably in some shallower Holocene wells, and in wells drilled into older Quaternary and Neogene sediments.

It is emphasized that the maps and tables presented are most useful for identifying current regional trends in groundwater arsenic hazard and that their use for predicting arsenic concentrations in individual wells, for example for the purposes of well switching, is not recommended, particularly because of the lack of sufficient data (especially at depths >80 m) and because, as in Bangladesh and West Bengal, there is considerable heterogeneity of groundwater arsenic concentrations on a scale of metres to hundreds of metres. We have insufficient data at this time to determine unequivocally whether or not arsenic concentrations are increasing in shallow Cambodian groundwaters as a result of groundwater-abstraction activities.

Background Survival estimates are integral to care for patients diagnosed with dementia. Few Canadian studies have carried out long-term follow-up of well-described cohorts, analyzing survival related to multiple risk factors. Methods Survival analysis of an inception cohort enrolled at a British Columbia (BC) tertiary dementia referral clinic between 1997 and 1999 was undertaken. Vital status was completed for 168 patients diagnosed with dementia. An evaluation of the effects of demographics, vascular risk factors, cognitive and functional ratings, apolipoprotein 4-status, and cholinesterase use on survival was performed using a log-rank test and time-dependent Cox regression. Survival of this dementia cohort was compared with the age-matched life expectancy of persons in BC. Results In all, 158/168 (94.0%) subjects died over 16.6 years, with a median survival of 7.08 years. Risk factors associated with shorter survival in dementia groups included age of onset ≥80 (hazard ratio [HR] 1.56, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.05-2.32); greater functional disability (Disability Assessment for Dementia<55% [HR 1.47, 95% CI 1.04-2.08]); and cumulative medical illness severity (Cumulative Illness Rating Scale≥7 [HR 1.51, 95% CI 1.08-2.12)]. Compared with the BC population, years of potential life lost for dementia subjects aged <65 was 15.36 years, and for dementia subjects aged ≥80 it was 1.82 years. Conclusions Survival in dementia subjects is shorter than population life expectancies for each age strata, with greatest impact on younger patients. For people diagnosed with dementia, age ≥80 years, cumulative medical illness severity, and functional disabilities are the most significant survival predictors and can be used to guide prognosis.

Diabetic polyneuropathy is a complex disease of progressive nerve fiber loss. Initial screening and diagnosis in clinical practice usually depend on assessment of subjective complaints. A need exists for objective, simple, and reproducible assessment tools that can be readily used in clinical practice. The importance of early diagnosis is highlighted by the recent North American Diabetes Control and Complications Trial where intensive insulin therapy reduced the risk of developing diabetic neuropathy by 61%. At the University of Michigan, we have developed an outpatient neuropathy program. Patients are given a questionnaire and a brief screening examination, designated the Neuropathy Screening Instrument. Diabetic neuropathy is confirmed and staged in patients with a positive Neuropathy Screening Instrument, by a quantitative neurologic examination and nerve conduction studies, designated the Diabetic Neuropathy Score. The Michigan program has been compared with well-established instruments and has been found to be sensitive and reproducible for screening and diagnosis. We believe the program provides a valuable tool for the clinician in the practice setting and should allow diagnosis and intervention earlier in the course of diabetic neuropathy.

The bulk of the public opinion research on immigration identifies the factors leading to opposition to immigration. In contrast, we focus on a previously unexplored factor yielding support for immigration: humanitarianism. Relying upon secondary analysis of national public opinion survey data and an original survey experiment, we demonstrate that humanitarian concern significantly decreases support for restrictive immigration policy. Results from our survey experiment demonstrate that in an information environment evoking both threat and countervailing humanitarian concern regarding immigration, the latter can and does override the former. Last, our results point to the importance of individual differences in empathy in moderating the effects of both threat and humanitarian inducements.

A stochastic model is developed for the expected number of prey taken by a single predator when prey depletion is apparent. The so-called “random predator equation” with prey exploitation of Royama and Rogers is compared with the stochastic model. The numerical comparisons illustrate situations where the deterministic model provides adequate and inadequate approximations.