Sighs matter!

Such is the opinion of researchers at the University of West Terrier’s School of Medicine, after they analyzed data from three extensive surveys of Animal morbidity and mortality.

The team of investigators, whose medical specialties include cardiology, trichology, neurology, and gastroenterology, examined the health outcomes of twenty-eight species of Animals in The Park. The results of the retrospective study will appear in their entirety this Autumn in the prestigious journal, Sanitas.

“This study is the first of its kind to examine sighs as a marker for disease,” said Dr. Adelaide Antelope, who heads the group of researchers.

A total number of four hundred and twenty-five Animals participated in the survey, which were conducted at UWT over a fifteen-year period. Although previous generations of physicians believed sighs to be of diagnostic and prognostic significance, that theory had fallen out of fashion by the year 8 AZ.

“Even though we continued to note sighs in the history-taking,” Dr. Antelope said, “the significance was more as an attendant behaviour rather than as a sign of more serious disease.”

According to Dr. Yazmina Yak, a senior member of the research team, sighs became an issue in the study when one particular investigator noted the frequency with which the term, “idiopathic exhalation” was used in the description of the mental state of patients who were found to suffer from serious illness.

Also among the group’s findings Dr. Antelope says, is a correlation between sighing and dying (see Figure 1 below).

“When we took a closer look at the outcomes of the sighers, we were astonished by what appeared to be an almost direct relationship,” he said.

Indeed, the study showed that Animals who presented with sighs and at least two other disease symptoms stood a seventy-two per cent greater chance of having an illness that could trigger death.

That statistic alone, says the research group, is enough to make any Animal sigh.