Stroke researcher Dr. Lara Boyd has never worked with children before but a unique curriculum at Eaton Arrowsmith School has inspired the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist to investigate if and how the adolescent brain changes in response to a mental physiotherapy-like regimen of daily, repeated, cognitive exercises. With this project, Dr. Boyd becomes one of the first scientists to research the concept of building up brain matter for education purposes, to improve learning response among children with learning disabilities.
For more than 30 years, Dr. John Fleetham has been investigating sleep – or lack thereof due to snoring and sleep apnea. Dr. Fleetham is a respirologist and medical director of the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) Sleep Disorder Program. His specific research area of interest is obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and over the past three decades he has led a research program investigating its causes, prevalence, consequences, diagnosis, and treatments.
A novel pacemaker is demonstrating that good things really do come in small packages. This past September, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist and cardiologist Dr. Matthew Bennett implanted the Nanostim leadless pacemaker, Canada’s first and smallest leadless pacemaker, into an elderly female patient’s heart at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH). Dr.
What are some VCHRI organizational highlights from 2014?
The consistent breadth and depth of research happening at VCHRI never ceases to amaze me. Our scientists continue to ask the challenging questions that facilitate new and greater understanding of disease and health, ultimately leading to healthier people, healthier communities, and a healthier system of care.
Canadians love their beef. In 2012, Canadians consumed an average of 44.1 lbs of beef per person yearly1. The greatest challenge to mass producing beef in order to meet this demand is Bovine Respiratory Disease Complex (BRDc) – a multi-factorial disease that accounts for 75% of the morbidity and more than 50% of the mortality in feedlot cattle and requires broad use of antibiotics.
As Canada's population ages, so too does demand for more quality senior care facilities. Research led by Dr. Margaret McGregor, a Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist with the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation, has found that types of ownership and certain organizational features of nursing homes correlate to fewer emergency department (ED) transfers.
