Commentary: PowerPoint has swept all before it

Mechanical insufflation/exsufflation: has it come of age? A commentary.

12 In 1852, the English physician MERYON [1] described how a 16-yr-old male with what was to become known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died from acute respiratory failure during a febrile episode with "profuse secretion of mucus from the trachea and larynx". One-hundred and fifty years later, over 90% of episodes of respiratory failure in patients with muscular dystrophy are caused by ineffe...

GUEST COMMENTARY It Is All about Metabolic Fluxes

The dramatic impact of Coronavirus outbreak on air quality: Has it saved as much as it has killed so far?

The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first reported from Wuhan, China, on December 31st, 2019. As the number of coronavirus infections has exceeded 100,000 with toll deaths of about 5000 worldwide as of early March, 2020, scientists and researchers are racing to investigate the nature of this virus and evaluate the short and long term effects of this disease. Despite it...

Coronavirus: Where Has All the Health Economics Gone?

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to unfold there is an untold number of trade-offs being made in every country around the globe. The experience in the United Kingdom and Canada to date has not seen much uptake of health economics methods. We provide some thoughts on how this could take place, specifically in three areas. Firstly, this can involve understanding the i...

Invited Commentary Invited Commentary: Ripeness Is All

An association between air pollution and hospital admission for heart failure was first noted in the literature in 1995 (1). The association was confirmed in subsequent studies (2, 3), along with many studies showing an association with a more general increase in cardiovascular admissions (4–6). The most consistent associations have been with carbon monoxide and particulate matter, and both Poi...