Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a global health problem affecting millions of people. Autonomic dysfunction and disordered breathing patterns are commonly observed in patients with CHF, and both are strongly related to poor prognosis and high mortality risk. Tonic activation of carotid body (CB) chemoreceptors contributes to sympathoexcitation and disordered breathing patterns in experimental mo...

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is one of the most common diagnoses in elderly United States Medicare (⩾ age 65) population. This patient population has a particularly high readmission rate, with estimate 6-month rate topping 40%. The rapid rise mobile health (mHealth) presents promising new pathway for reducing hospital readmissions CHF, and, more generally, management chronic conditions. Using...

IntroductionIn Ontario, Canada two large health systems came together to scale out an evidenced based integrated care model. St. Joseph’s Health System (SJHS) Integrated Comprehensive Care (ICC) program began (2012) in within a single surgical stream and has since scaled all surgeries complex/chronic patients across regional area (patient population of 1.4M). University Network (UHN), Canada’s ...

Article: School health personnel recognize the importance of sending positive messages to students, faculty, staff, and the community about adopting and maintaining appropriate health lifestyle behaviors. Yet, schools often send conflicting messages. Some messages have historical precedence in schools that are difficult to ameliorate or eliminate. Nonetheless, school health personnel should ide...

In a recent leading article on Griffiths in action the British Medical J7ournal suggested that the tabloid headline might have been "Administrators hijack NHS."' Hence the title for this article, which captures the essence of my experience of a course held at the King's Fund College. This was the introductory week of a two year training programme for registrars in community medicine; most of th...

There has been no systematic examination of issues surrounding pension funds and their tobacco shareholdings. This paper describes two studies designed to document the tobacco investment policies and practices of pension funds, and to assess community and fund member attitudes to pension fund shareholdings in the tobacco industry. Chief executives (n = 282) of Australian pension funds were mail...

Placement of dental implants may improve the retention and stability of complete dentures in edentulous patients. Treatment costs, however, substantially increase with implant treatment. We therefore performed a stochastic cost-effectiveness analysis, comparing implant-supported over-denture prostheses (4 implants), implant-retained overdentures (2 implants), and complete dentures, from the pat...

BACKGROUND Information is limited regarding the rates of progression to congestive heart failure (CHF) and death in individuals with asymptomatic left ventricular systolic dysfunction (ALVD). We sought to characterize the natural history of ALVD, by studying unselected individuals with this condition in the community. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 4257 participants (1860 men) from the Framin...

BACKGROUND Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a chronic debilitating condition with economic consequences, mostly because of frequent hospitalisations. Physical activity and adequate self-management capacity are important risk reduction strategies in the management of CHF. The Home-Heart-Walk is a self-monitoring intervention. This model of intervention has adapted the 6-minute walk test as a home-...

High rates of comorbidity present a challenge in providing care to elderly Medicare managed care enrollees. Comorbidity or the presence of coexisting illness strongly influences utilization, costs, and outcomes of health care. Ischemic heart disease (IHD) and congestive heart failure (CHF) are leading causes of morbidity and mortality among Medicare beneficiaries. Both have been the targets of ...