Michal Abrahamowicz

..We illustrated the practical advantages of AIC-based a posteriori model selection and WCE modeling in a real-life pharmacoepidemiology example...

..The overall rate of maternal mortality measured in hospitals during the post-intervention period (Year 4) is the primary outcome. The evaluation will also include cost-effectiveness...

..Therefore, the new method improved the overall accuracy of IV estimates in studies with unobserved confounding and time-varying prescribing preferences...

..We assessed whether patient-physician communication examination scores in a national, standardized clinical skills examination predicted future use of screening mammography (SM)...

..Physicians in each study condition were able to preset levels that triggered alerts...

..The purpose of this study was to determine whether a physician's medical management and communication ability influence persistence with antihypertensive treatment...

..The goal of this study was to identify factors associated with decreased disability and lower pain scores 6 months after a multimodal treatment program for fibromyalgia (FM)...

..To produce evidence on the longitudinal evolution of risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)...

..To describe consultation with an arthritis specialist because of suspected new-onset juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) and to determine factors associated with prompt consultation...

..70 (0.53-0.94) for flavanones. An inverse association with total flavone and flavanone intake was observed for squamous cell carcinoma but not adenocarcinoma. In conclusion, low flavonoid intake from food may increase lung cancer risk...

..This study sought to characterize temporal trends in all-cause mortality in patients with congenital heart disease (CHD)...

..Effective patient-physician communication is critical to address this problem. Recognizing the importance of physician communication skills, licensure examinations were reformed in the United States and Canada to evaluate these skills...

..To describe treatment adherence to a multimodal integrated program for patients with fibromyalgia (FM), identify predictors of adherence to treatment recommendations, and examine the relationship between adherence and patient outcomes...

..To examine the temporal relationship between depression diagnoses and cognitive function in older medical patients...

..Though, non-white immigrant women were less likely to have severe psychological distress through this 12 year period, they were the ones most likely to rate their health as poor...

..The objective of this study is to assess if some of the risk factors for falls are associated with new benzodiazepine prescriptions in elderly persons...

..Furthermore, we propose two novel normalized weights with the goal of reducing the MSM estimators' variability. The performance of the normalized weights is evaluated alongside the usual unstabilized and stabilized weights...

..Thus, women from countries lower on the development index appear at greater risk of poor SRH, and should be at the forefront of public health programmes aimed at new immigrants in Canada...

..We also apply the proposed bootstrap methods to obtain confidence bands around flexible estimates of time-dependent effects in a real-life analysis of cluster event times...

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..We validated the method in simulations and applied it to re-assess the association between exposure to a psychotropic drug and fall-related injuries in the elderly...

..We wished to determine whether patients suspected of having new-onset RA in Québec consulted with a rheumatologist, to document any delay in these consultations, and to determine factors associated with prompt consultation...

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..To address this problem, licensure assessment has been reformed in Canada and the United States, including a national standardized assessment of patient-physician communication and clinical history taking and examination skills...

..In conclusion, ICD recipients would be willing to pay a substantial amount for a replacement ICD. Considering the expensive price of the device, ICD recipients value favorably the benefits provided by the ICD...

..To develop and evaluate the acceptability and use of an integrated electronic prescribing and drug management system (MOXXI) for primary care physicians...

..We propose new methods for modeling various aspects of medication use history and employment of them to assess the adverse effects of selected benzodiazepines...

..To investigate whether an electronic prescribing and integrated drug information system was more likely to be used by primary care physicians for patients of low socioeconomic (SES) patients...

..These results indicate that the loss of 'healthy immigrant effect' with regard to convergence of BMI to Canadian levels may not be experienced equally by all immigrants in Canada...

..02, 95% C.I.: 1.00-1.04). Visible minority female immigrants were least likely to report an unmet healthcare need. In general, there is little evidence that immigrants have worse access to health-care than the Canadian-born population...

..We hypothesized that changes in rates of congenital, valvular, and noncongenital surgical operations in congenital heart patients varied with age and disease severity over the last two decades...

..The optimal strategy remains uncertain, and it is unclear to what extent different reasonable approaches influence findings. We provide an empirical comparison of results from several modeling strategies...

..The investigated weighted Cox model is a potential alternative method to analyse matched or unmatched population-based case-control studies with time-dependent exposures...

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..We sought to determine how very high educational attainment is associated with PTB, and to assess differences by maternal age and nativity...

..We compared the estimates obtained with different provider-based IVs in a real-life observational comparative drug effectiveness study...

..In conclusion, HIV incidence has declined in this cohort, with an acceleration of the reduction in HIV transmission after 2000...

..They are more likely to die or to undergo lung transplantation than to present with recurrent major hemoptysis...

..Cross-sectional associations suggest that body art piercing (BAP) is a risk factor for hepatitis C (HCV) infection among injection drug users. The temporal basis of the relationship has not been established...

..We assessed, in simulations, how the performance of the IV estimates depends on the strength of this instrument...

..This study aimed to determine the independent effects of presence of delirium, type of delirium (incident vs prevalent), and severity of delirium symptoms on 12-month mortality among older medical inpatients...

..To reduce overall waiting time, strategies would need to be systemically applied...

..To identify predictors of maintenance of exercise for women with fibromyalgia (FM)...

..It was concluded that flexible modeling yields new insights about the effect of long-term air pollution on mortality...

..Modeling post-LMP mortality eliminates the crossover paradox for race and maternal smoking in a single statistical model...

..This article will systematically review the methodological characteristics and results of studies of variables and indices that predict functional decline in older hospitalized patients...

..In this prospective study we examined predictors for adherence to stretching and aerobic exercises in women provided with an individualized home based program...

..Standards for licensure are designed to provide assurance to the public of a physician's competence to practice. However, there has been little assessment of the relationship between examination scores and subsequent practice performance...

..We investigated this phenomenon to identify demographic, clinical, and psychosocial factors associated with patient-physician discordance on physical functioning, well being, and satisfaction with the office visit...

..4) When estimating the effects of time since cessation or age at initiation, it is still useful to use cigarette-years, because it reduces multicollinearity...

..However, existing data from trials do not address whether all ACE inhibitors benefit patients similarly...

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..To determine the risk of injury associated with the new use of individual benzodiazepines and dosage regimens in the elderly...

..Our objective was to determine whether a reduced rate of orthopaedic surgery was evident for persons with RA who saw a rheumatologist early in the disease course...

..The PAs also allowed more flexibility in the specification of the marginal distributions of event times and required less calibration...

..To illustrate the new insights offered by the proposed model, we apply it to re-assess the effects of patient age and of secular trends on disease-related mortality in colon cancer...

..CONCLUSION: Two-week trajectories of delirium severity were associated with short-term mortality and delirium severity at 8-week follow-up...

..To evaluate alternative approaches to correct for bias due to inaccurate diagnostic criteria in database studies of associations...

..CONCLUSION: Some proactive measures can be taken to increase the rate of HPV clearance, and there may be some differences between the sets of predictors of low-risk and high-risk HPV clearance...

..The results suggest that coronary risk assessment can be improved by utilizing updated risk factors and that the optimal frequency of updating may vary across subpopulations...

..We sought to obtain a population-based estimate of the incidence of first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum psychosis (SSP) among adolescents and young adults in Montreal...

..Applications in cancer epidemiology illustrate how the product model may yield new insights about the role of prognostic factors...

..Long-term treatment with beta-blockers reduces mortality after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Whether beta-blockers exert a class effect is unknown...

..Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) remains limited by the risk of restenosis. Patients' perceptions of the health benefits and value of avoiding restenosis are incompletely known...

..The objective of this study, using repeated measures over a 12-month period, was to examine the short-term temporal relationship between depressive symptoms and cognitive impairment...

..We sought to determine the proportion of children and young adults with CHD receiving outpatient cardiology care and to identify predictors of lack of follow-up...

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..To evaluate whether a 12-week home-based exercise program is more effective than usual care for alleviating depressive symptomology in the postpartum...

..The magnitude of the latter bias is proportional to the true effect, suggesting that an improved manipulation of the risk sets may eliminate, or at least reduce, the bias...

..23, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Long periods of Benzodiazepine use are frequent among Quebec elderly. The evidence of increasing dose, particularly for older women, and long-duration of use has important implications for clinicians...

..These findings support the validity of the MISA for use with elderly individuals with neurogenic ingestive skill loss residing in long-term care facilities...

..Overall, our results suggest that the use of GAM to reduce residual confounding offers several improvements over conventional parametric modelling...

..Patient and physician ratings demonstrated moderate-to-high concurrent validity. Study limitations and directions for future research with PPDS are discussed...

..06). These findings highlight the need for multidisciplinary interventions that target psychological distress, coping, and comorbidity in patients with FM...

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..In particular, the causal roles of corticosteroid therapy and SLE disease activity, and whether their putative effects are mediated through conventional risk factors, remain unclear...

..Method 5 used a time-dependent variable for treatment initiation. Methods 4 and 5 better controlled for survival bias and yielded similar results, suggesting a 20% risk reduction of recurrent myocardial infarction or death events...

..These results may have implications for vaccine development and for public health decisions about vaccination programs...

..Whereas the majority of episodes with a type-specific HPV infection cleared within 2 years, there were many women who were either reinfected with a new HPV genotype or presumably experienced reactivation of their initial infection...

..To propose statistical measures to identify different longitudinal patterns of change in quantitative health indicators...

..59, p =.0120). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the therapeutic relationship, as well as individual clinical and psychosocial characteristics, influence adherence to medication...

..Our results suggest that the risk factor profile for HPV coinfection among HPV-infected women shares several similarities with risk factors for any HPV infection...

..CONCLUSION: These data suggest good agreement between prospective and retrospective evaluations of the SLICC/ACR DI scores...