Providence In the News

Visiting a Providence Health Care site? Here's what you need to know about keeping our patients and residents safe during Influenza season.

To support a failing heart, there are two general types of ventricular assist devices, long-term and short-term. Two cardiac surgeons - along with four other cardiologists - at St. Paul's Hospital perform all implantations of long-term devices in the province, under the B.C. Acute Heart Failure Program.

Hepatitis is a frequent headline-maker in media and creates lots of online chat in blogs, tweets and posts. No wonder, given that this liver disease is potentially life-threatening. Despite all this attention, getting people tested and treated is still a challenge for public-health practitioners.

Harm reduction has resulted to seek a decline in illicit drug use. It has improved public safety as once Ground Zero for an HIV and overdose epidemic claimed many lives, according to a 15-year study of drug use in Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside.

St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver has unveiled a space for smudging and pipe ceremonies so their Aboriginal patients can receive traditional healing. The All-Nations Sacred Space is an inclusive area designated for ceremonies where cedar, tobacco, sage, and sweetgrass are burned in an abalone shell and wafted with an eagle feather. The ceremonies are important to Vancouver-based artist Dalannah Gail Bowen, a woman who's spent time at the hospital for drug addiction and a stroke.

Aortic root rupture that occurs during transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) using balloon-expandable prostheses carries a heightened risk of in-hospital adverse events but can be predicted by anatomic and procedural factors. The findings, from a small multicenter study, were published online June 7, 2013, ahead of print in Circulation.

You tune in to News1130 to find out about wait times at the border crossings and ferry terminals, so why not at hospital emergency departments? Dr. Eric Grafstein is the head of ER services for Vancouver Coastal Health and helped develop a website that lets people can see how long of a wait they’re in for at the health region’s emergency rooms.