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Background/objectives: Influenza is associated with significant morbidity and mortality, particularly for older adults. Persistent functional decline following hospitalization has important impacts on older adults' wellbeing and independence, but has been under‐studied in relation to influenza. We aimed to investigate persistent functional change in older adults admitted to hospital with influenza and other acute respiratory illness (ARI). Design: Protective observational cohort study. Setting: Canadian Immunization Research Network Serious Outcomes Surveillance Network 2011 to 2012 influenza season. Participants: A total of 925 patients aged 65 and older admitted to hospital with influenza and other ARI. Measurements: Influenza was laboratory‐confirmed. Frailty was measured using a Frailty index (FI). Functional status was measured using the Barthel index (BI); moderate persistent functional decline was defined as a clinically meaningful loss of ≥10 to <20 points on the 100‐point BI. Catastrophic disability (CD) was defined as a loss of ≥20 points, equivalent to full loss of independence in two basic activities of daily living. Results: Five hundred and nineteen (56.1%) were women; mean age was 79.4 (standard deviation=8.4) years. Three hundred and forty‐six (37.4%) had laboratory‐confirmed influenza. Influenza cases had lower baseline function (BI = 77.0 vs 86.9, P <.001) and higher frailty (FI = 0.23 vs 0.20, P <.001) than those with other ARI. A total of 8.4% died, 8.2% experienced persistent moderate functional decline, and 9.9% experienced CD. Higher baseline frailty was associated with increased odds of experiencing functional decline, CD, and death. The experience of functional decline and CD, and its association with frailty, was the same for influenza and other ARI. Conclusion: Functional loss in hospital is common among older adults; for some this functional loss is persistent and catastrophic. This highlights the importance of prevention and optimal management of acute declines in health, including influenza, to avoid hospitalization. In the case of influenza, for which vaccines exist, this raises the potential of vaccine preventable disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self‐harm in young people remains a significant concern. Studies of emergency departments have centred on negative professional attitudes. There has been limited interrogation and theorisation of what drives such attitudes, and the contexts that sustain them. Adopting a complex systems lens, this study aimed to explore how systems shape professional and patient interactions. It draws upon interviews with healthcare and affiliated professionals (n = 14) in a UK case study hospital, with primary focus on the emergency department. Data were analysed using a thematic approach and the principles of grounded theory. Four themes emerged, with the first three centralising how professionals' practices operate within: (1) a framework of risk management; (2) expectations of progressing patients through the care pathway; and (3) a culture of specialist expertise, with resulting uncertainty about who is responsible for self‐harm. The fourth theme considers barriers to system change. A small number of participants described efforts to enact positive modifications to practices, but these were frustrated by entrenched system structures. The potential detrimental impacts for patient care and professional wellbeing are considered. Future practice needs systemic action to support professionals in treating patients experiencing self‐harm, while future research requires more ethnographic explorations of the complex system in situ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Potential merits of a social practice perspective for examining the meanings and dynamics of family food include moving beyond individual behaviour, and exploring how practices emerge, develop and change. However, researchers have struggled to encourage reflection on mundane practices, and how to understand associated meanings. Drawing on a study of families in South Wales, this article reflects on the value of the diary‐interview approach in addressing these methodological challenges, and aims to explore and understand the dynamics of control across family contexts. Contemporary practice theories distinguish between practices as ‘performances’ and practices as ‘entities’ and the diary‐interview method facilitated an examination of these dimensions. Detailed accounts of daily ‘performances’ (through diaries), alongside reflection on underlying contexts and ‘entities’ (through interviews), illustrated the entanglement of control, practices and context. The article adds further complexity to the concept of practice ‘bundles’ which facilitated an understanding of how food was interrelated with other practices – across family contexts and across generations. Sociological approaches with a practices perspective at the core, offer potential for developing public health interventions by acknowledging: the relational meaning of food; the embeddedness of food within everyday practices; and the need to consider interventions across a range of policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pre-existing conditions are imperfectly recorded in health care databases. We assessed whether pre-existing neurologic conditions (epilepsy, multiple sclerosis [MS]) were differentially recorded in the presence of major obstetric outcomes (Caesarean delivery, preterm delivery, preeclampsia) in delivery records. We also evaluated the impact of differential recording on measures of frequency and association between the conditions and outcomes.Methods: The 2011-2014 Truven Health MarketScan® Commercial Claims Dataset was used to identify pregnancies. We calculated the relative recording of epilepsy and MS at delivery hospitalization compared with a 270-day pre-delivery window both overall and by the presence of major obstetric outcomes. We estimated risk ratios for the association between epilepsy and MS with the outcomes for each ascertainment window.Results: We identified 909 065 pregnancies in women continuously enrolled from 270-days before the delivery date. Of women with epilepsy identified in the pre-delivery window, 73% had the condition coded at delivery. For MS, the proportion was 60%. MS recording at delivery did not vary by obstetric outcomes, however, delivery-coded epilepsy was less likely confirmed in the pre-delivery window in the presence of preeclampsia. Generally, the period of ascertainment did not meaningfully impact risk ratios, however, the risk ratio for preeclampsia associated with epilepsy was 1.67 (95% CI 1.47, 1.90) when epilepsy was ascertained at delivery and 1.26 (95% CI 1.07, 1.48) when epilepsy was ascertained in the pre-delivery window (heterogeneity, P = .007).Conclusions: Ascertainment of epilepsy and MS in delivery hospitalization records underestimated prevalence. However, the window of recording generally did not impact risk ratio estimates of associations with obstetric outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims To demonstrate the importance of identifying adolescent preferences for smoking cessation in order to inform the design of effective adolescent cessation services. Design Structured qualitative interviews drawing on means-end theory. Setting Three youth-clubs and two secondary schools in south-east Wales. Participants Twenty-five male and female 13–18-year-olds, mainly daily smokers. Findings Interviewees did not assume immediately that a smoking cessation service is something that will be available to them, and therefore they initially encountered difficulties in identifying attributes of such support. With further prompting interviewees were able to express a preference for support attributes, but these were not attributes that traditionally form part of cessation provision. Their main preference was for support from friends and family, access to nicotine replacement therapy and non-school-based, flexible support and guidance. Conclusion The results re-emphasize the inadequacies of existing cessation provision for meeting adolescent preferences and suggest that developing more adolescent-appropriate support requires a reconceptualization of existing interventions, with service users situated at the core of intervention design. The study highlights a number of service development points for intervention planners including: rethinking the timing and location of provision; placing more emphasis on the selection of facilitators; harnessing support from friends and family; and rooting these developments in broader tobacco control strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of a pediatric headache infusion center (HIC) in alleviating the symptoms and preventing future visits to the emergency department (ED). Background: Headache is a common reason for visits to the pediatric ED. ED visits are associated with inordinate costs of care and are conceived by parents to be avoidable if adequate alternatives are available. An infusion center for acute treatment of intractable headache in children with chronic migraine may be an effective alternative to an ED visit. Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of data from a single‐center cohort of patients with a known history of chronic migraine, presenting to Dayton Children's HIC with an acute migraine from June 1, 2017 to June 1, 2020. Patients were treated according to established protocols divided into two pathways. Patient demographics, clinical characteristics, pre‐ and postinfusion pain scores, ED visits and inpatient admissions within 2 weeks of HIC visit, and ED visits 1 year prior and 1 year after the HIC visit were noted. Results: A total of 297 HIC visits were analyzed from 201 patients. The HIC was effective in controlling symptoms with a significant reduction in pain score (median [interquartile range; IQR] 7.0 [2.0] preinfusion vs. 1.0 [2.0] postinfusion, p < 0.001). Only 25/297 (8.4%) patients came to the ED within 2 weeks of the HIC visit, and an even smaller number of patients (20/297, 6.7%) were admitted as inpatients within 2 weeks of the HIC visit. The number of ED visits was significantly reduced in the year after the HIC visit compared with the year prior (median [IQR] 1.0 [2.0] before vs. 0.0 [1.0] after, p < 0.001). Conclusion: A pediatric HIC is effective in alleviating the symptoms and preventing ED visits. These centers should be considered as standard of care at children's hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]