The COVID-19 pandemic in older non-COVID-19 patients: impact and research opportunities

Join us for an online talk from Maura Marcucci, assistant professor, Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and Medicine, McMaster University about how older patients are being affected by COVID-19. The talk will be moderated by Parminder Raina, professor, Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact, McMaster University.

Older patients have been suffering the greatest of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Every day the media give us an idea providing the numbers and demographics of the victims of the infection. However this is not the only way older people, in particular older people with chronic diseases, are affected by the pandemic. Social distancing, mobility constraints, deferral or cancellation of services, disruptions to the continuity of care, these are only examples of how older people, even without the SARS-CoV-2 or any COVID-19 infection, are also victims of the pandemic. For the first part, the talk will present the existing evidence of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on older non-COVID-19 people. In the second part, the talk will cover how this unfortunate circumstance is also providing unique research opportunities, with the potential of growing our knowledge and improving our care delivery to our old patients, with such rapid research timelines never seen before. The talk will take the lens of a general internist, with interest in geriatric and perioperative medicine, and will use the example of the changes imposed by the COVID-19 contingency plan to the use of the operating rooms.

Maura Marcucci – Assistant Professor in the Departments of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact (HEI), and Medicine, at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. She is an attending physician in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Division of Perioperative Care. She had her medical training and residency in Internal Medicine in Italy. She then completed an MSc in Health Research Methodology and a clinical fellowship in Hematology/Internal Medicine at McMaster University. In 2013-2016 she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Milan, in the Department of Internal and Geriatric Medicine. Back to McMaster, she joined the Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine, and Surgical Research Group at the Population Health Research Institute. The main focus of her research is neurocognitive outcomes after surgery. She holds a CIHR grant and a PSI mid-career research award to study the effect of minimizing perioperative bleeding and hypotension on the incidence of postoperative delirium and cognitive decline.

Parminder Raina – Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact at McMaster University. He specializes in the epidemiology of aging with emphasis on developing the interdisciplinary field of geroscience to understand the processes of aging from cell to society. He has expertise in epidemiologic modeling, systematic review methodology, injury, and knowledge transfer. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Geroscience and the Raymond and Margaret Labarge Chair in Research and Knowledge Application for Optimal Aging. He has been appointed to the National Seniors Council in 2018 and is the Scientific Director of the McMaster Research Institute for Research on Aging and Labarge Centre for Mobility in Aging, and the Scientific Co-Lead for the newly-formed Collaborative for Health & Aging. He is the lead investigator of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, which is currently examining the experiences of older adults during the coronavirus pandemic, exploring how they cope, the impacts on their physical and mental health, and changes to how they access health-care services.

In partnership with the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging and McMaster Alumni.

Learn more and register here: https://socrates.mcmaster.ca/events/the-covid-19-pandemic-in-older-non-covid-19-patients-impact-and-research-opportunities/