Publications

While immigrants in the US suffer poor access to healthcare in general, access within immigrant populations varies notably by legal status and employment. Intersections between immigration, employment, and healthcare policy have shaped immigrants' access or exclusion from healthcare; however, little research has examined how immigrants experience and navigate these intersections. Drawing on social exclusion theory and the theory of bounded agency, we aimed to investigate Mexican and Chinese immigrants' experiences of exclusion from healthcare as one key dimension of social exclusion-and how this was shaped by interactions with the institutions of immigration and employment. The examination of two ethnic immigrant groups who live under the same set of policies allows for a focus on the common impacts of policy. We selected Mexican and Chinese immigrants as the two largest subgroups in California's Latinx and Asian immigrant population. We use a policy lens to analyze qualitative data from the mixed-methods Research on Immigrant Health and State Policy (RIGHTS) Study, involving 60 in-depth interviews with Mexican and Chinese immigrants in California between August 2018-August 2019. We identified two primary themes: pathways of social exclusion and access, and strategies used to address social exclusion. Findings show that immigrants' exclusion from healthcare is fundamentally linked to legal status and employment, and that immigrants navigate difficult choices between opportunities for improved employment and changes in legal status. We argue that multiple categories of legal status affect immigrants' employment opportunities and social position, which, in turn, translates to stratified healthcare access. Our findings support the literature establishing legal status as a mechanism of social stratification but challenge legal-illegal binary paradigms.

BACKGROUND

Coronary blood flow in humans is known to be predominantly diastolic. Small studies in animals and humans suggest that this is less pronounced or even reversed in the right coronary artery (RCA).

AIMS

This study aimed to characterise the phasic patterns of coronary flow in the left versus right coronary arteries of patients undergoing invasive physiological assessment.

METHODS

We analysed data from the Iberian-Dutch-English Collaborators (IDEAL) study. A total of 482 simultaneous pressure and flow measurements from 301 patients were included in our analysis.

RESULTS

On average, coronary flow was higher in diastole both at rest and during hyperaemia in both the RCA and LCA (mean diastolic-to-systolic velocity ratio [DSVR] was, respectively, 1.85±0.70, 1.76±0.58, 1.53±0.34 and 1.58±0.43 for LCA, LCA, RCA and RCA, p<0.001 for between-vessel comparisons). Although the type of RCA dominance affected the DSVR magnitude (RCA=1.55±0.35, RCA=1.40±0.27, RCA=1.35; standard deviation not reported as n=3), systolic flow was very rarely predominant (DSVR was greater than or equal to 1.00 in 472/482 cases [97.9%] overall), with equal prevalence in the LCA. Stenosis severity or microvascular dysfunction had a negligible impact on DSVR in both the RCA and LCA (DSVR x hyperaemic stenosis resistance R =0.018, p=0.03 and DSVR x coronary flow reserve R <0.001, p=0.98).

CONCLUSIONS

In patients with coronary artery disease undergoing physiological assessment, diastolic flow predominance is seen in both left and right coronary arteries. Clinical interpretation of coronary physiological data should therefore not differ between the left and the right coronary systems.