Publications

Background: Delirium is strongly associated with subsequent dementia, but this is often assumed to reflect underlying associations of baseline health with dementia. We examined the associations of delirium on admission with incident dementia across the spectrum of long-term conditions (LTCs).

Aims: Cardiac troponin is central to risk stratification in patients with suspected acute coronary syndrome. High-sensitivity assays measuring cardiac troponin (hs-cTn) I or T are recommended by international guidelines. However, diagnostic thresholds for these assays are derived from different populations. We aimed to evaluate whether the change in assay influenced risk stratification.

Bacterial infections are a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Antibiotics have been hugely successful in improving health outcomes and have aided in the global reduction of under-5 mortality.

Objectives: Many people with depression do not respond to antidepressants and our poor mechanistic understanding of antidepressant response has hampered efforts to personalise treatment. In this study, we aimed to develop novel measures of antidepressant treatment exposure and response by capitalising on the variety and volume of UK administrative records.

Background: Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) is a rare condition known to occur spontaneously or after heparin use. With the advent of COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, TTS cases emerged post-administration of adenoviral vaccines, termed vaccine-induced immune thrombosis and thrombocytopenia (VITT). In response, the TTS consortium was formed to deepen our understanding of this syndrome post-vaccination.

Mental health problems and insomnia affect up to half of all critical care survivors within a year of hospital discharge. My PhD work is comprised of four retrospective studies which examined community prescribing to adults following hospitalisation for critical care. The studies: 1) described psychotropic prescribing patterns in Lothian, Scotland from 2012–2019; 2) estimated the association of critical care and new psychotropic prescribing in hospitalised survivors; 3) assessed patient factors associated with new benzodiazepine or z-drug prescribing; and 4) estimated the risk of...

Delirium is a serious, often fluctuating neuropsychiatric disorder, mainly triggered by acute illness outside of the brain, and characterised by disturbances in attention, awareness, and cognition. The aims of the thesis were to: 1) study the documentation and coding rates of delirium in routine discharge summaries and hospital administrative systems; and using EMR data for exploratory analyses; 2) analyse the relationship between inflammatory markers and delirium, determined by 4AT; and 3) analyse the short- and long-term health outcomes experienced in patients with and without ...

We describe the epidemiology of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and interstitial lung disease (ILD) from 2004 to 2023 in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (NI) using a harmonised approach.