St. Paul's Hospital

Mind the Gap: Disparities in Education on Organ Donation and Transplantation-Results of a Global Survey.

Background: Widely accessible education on organ donation and transplantation (ODT) is a tool to reduce waiting lists, as <10% of transplant needs are met (Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation). We aimed to assess the current state of access to education on ODT worl...

Acceptance of Organs From Deceased Donors: Results of a Global Survey.

Background: With <10% of transplantation needs being met, one contributing factor may be the potential subjectivity in transplant specialists' acceptance of organs. Such decisions, if influenced by knowledge and/or comfort gaps, warrant intervention. We assessed knowledge and com...

Awareness, interest and use of a hospital-based overdose prevention site in Vancouver, Canada: a cross-sectional study

An overdose prevention site (OPS) was implemented as a harm-reduction strategy to mitigate the consequences associated with the injection of substances at one Canadian hospital. This study sought to examine awareness, interest, and use of a hospital-based OPS among individuals wh...

Reconsidering the Alberta study of the closure of the Red Deer supervised consumption site

Supervised consumption sites (SCS) are interventions supported by decades of evidence and yet remain subject to considerable politicization. Recently, researchers from Alberta, Canada published a study in the journal Addiction that sought to assess the impacts of the closure of a...

Prognostic Value of Coronary Computed Tomography Angiography–Derived Fractional Flow Reserve From a Large Nationwide Cohort

BACKGROUND: The diagnostic value of coronary computed tomography angiography–derived fractional flow reserve (FFR-CT) in stable coronary artery disease is well established. The prognostic value of predicting future cardiovascular events is less clear, as studies are limited by sm...

Transportability of Prognostic Markers

Transportability, the ability to maintain performance across populations, is a desirable property of markers of clinical outcomes. However, empirical findings indicate that markers often exhibit varying performances across populations. For prognostic markers that are advertised a...

Exploratory investigation of hemodialysis membrane–induced differential DNA methylation in patient blood

Hemodialysis (HD) patients experience chronic inflammation and immune activation driven by continuous blood contact with synthetic dialysis membranes. Increasing evidence suggests that membrane surface chemistry can modulate immune–epigenetic regulatory mechanisms, including DNA...

Novel therapies for refractory idiopathic inflammatory myopathy-associated interstitial lung disease

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) are systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases in which interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a frequent extra-muscular manifestation and a major driver of morbidity and mortality. ILD occurs most commonly in antisynthetase syn...

Contemporary Fibrotic Interstitial Lung Disease Outcomes: A Multicentre National Cohort Study

ABSTRACT Background and Objective This study determined contemporary transplant‐free survival in fibrotic interstitial lung disease (ILD), identified baseline factors associated with death or transplant, and assessed performance of the ILD‐GAP (Gender, Age, Physiology) index in a...

Learning from Biodegradable Coronary Stents: Future Directions for TPVR Biodegradable Stents

Bioresorbable stents (BRS) have been explored in cardiovascular intervention to provide temporary mechanical support while reducing long-term foreign material. The coronary experience has shown both the potential and the limitations of this strategy. First-generation polymeric st...

Morphology-based screening for sickle cell disease using low-cost automated microscopy and machine learning

Abstract Sickle cell disease (SCD) and β-thalassemia are the most common monogenic diseases, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income countries, where low-cost and accurate diagnostic tools are needed to reduce the global disease burden. Although the sickling test is c...

Therapeutic Target Mapping to Advance Drug Repurposing for Cardiovascular Disease: A Perspective from an Explanted Heart Biobank

Background: Although cardiovascular disease (CVD) significantly impacts the quality of life of millions of patients worldwide, the high costs of developing new drugs and conducting clinical trials for CVD hinder therapeutic development in this field. Repurposing approved drugs, o...