Impact of Cardiac Computed Tomographic Angiography Findings on Planning of Cancer Therapy in Patients with Concomitant Structural Heart Disease

Background. Exclusion of underlying coronary artery disease (CAD) is essential in the diagnosis of chemotherapy-induced cardiomyopathy. Presence and severity of CAD can also impact the choice of therapy in cancer patients. The value of cardiac computed tomographic angiography (CCTA) in this setting has not been reported. Methods. We collected data on the clinical presentation and indications for CCTA performed from January to December 2008 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC). All examinations were performed using a 64-detector scanner. CCTA results and subsequent treatment decisions were examined. Results. A total of 80 patients underwent CCTA during the study period for the following indications (not mutually exclusive): cardiomyopathy of unknown etiology in 33 pts (41.3%), chest pain in 32 (40.0%), abnormal stress test in 16 (20.0%), abnormal cardiac markers in 8 (10.0%), suspected cardiac mass or thrombus in 7 (8.8%). Chemotherapy-induced cardiomyopathy was diagnosed in 18 pts (22.5%). Severe CAD was detected in 22 pts (27.5%); due to concomitant advanced cancer or patient refusal, only 12 underwent coronary angiogram. Of these, 4 pts (5% of total) underwent coronary artery bypass grafting. A total of 41 pts (51.3%) had their cancer management altered based on CCTA findings. Conclusion. CCTA is useful in evaluating cancer pts with structural heart disease and can have an impact on the management of cancer and cardiac disease

vrAIn: Deep Learning based Orchestration for Computing and Radio Resources in vRANs

In Press / En PrensaThe virtualization of radio access networks (vRAN) is the last milestone in the NFV revolution. However, the complexrelationship between computing and radio dynamics make vRAN resource control particularly daunting. We present vrAIn, a resourceorchestrator for vRANs based on deep reinforcement learning. First, we use an autoencoder to project high-dimensional context data(traffic and channel quality patterns) into a latent representation. Then, we use a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithmbased on an actor-critic neural network structure and a classifier to map contexts into resource control decisions.We have evaluated vrAIn experimentally, using an open-source LTE stack over different platforms, and via simulations over aproduction RAN. Our results show that: (i) vrAIn provides savings in computing capacity of up to 30% over CPU-agnostic methods;(ii) it improves the probability of meeting QoS targets by 25% over static policies; (iii) upon computing capacity under-provisioning,vrAIn improves throughput by 25% over state-of-the-art schemes; and (iv) it performs close to an optimal offline oracle. To ourknowledge, this is the first work that thoroughly studies the computational behavior of vRANs and the first approach to a model-freesolution that does not need to assume any particular platform or context.This work was partially supported by the European Commission through Grant No. 856709 (5Growth) and Grant No. 856950 (5G-TOURS); by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) through Grant No. 17/CDA/4760; and AEI/FEDER through project AIM under Grant No. TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R. Furthermore, the work is closely related to the EU project DAEMON (Grant No. 101017109)

Cardiac tumors in a tertiary care cancer hospital: clinical features, echocardiographic findings, treatment and outcomes

Cardiac tumors are a rare entity, comprised of tumors with diverse histology and natural history. We report the clinical characteristics, echocardiograhic findings, therapy and outcome of 59 patients with primary and metastatic cardiac tumors. Our institutional echocardiogram data base from 1993 through 2005 was reviewed to identify patients diagnosed with intra-cardiac tumor. A total of 59 patients with cardiac tumors were identified and included in the study. The patients' characteristics, presenting symptoms, diagnostic tests, location, histology of the tumor, treatment and the one year survival rate of this population was collected from the medical records. Of the 59 cardiac tumor cases, 16 (27%) were primary cardiac tumors and 43 (73%) were secondary cardiac tumors. The most common primary tumor was sarcoma affecting 13 (81%) of the 16 cases. Of these, 5 patients were angiosarcoma, 5 unclassified sarcoma, one myxoid sarcoma and 2 malignant fibrous histiocytoma. The mean age at presentation was 41.1 years, and the most common location was right atrium affecting 6 cases (37.5%). The most common symptom of dyspnea was present in 10 (62.5%) cases. Eleven (25.6%) of the 43 secondary cardiac tumors were metastasis from renal cell carcinoma. The mean age at presentation was 55.4 years. Right atrium was the most frequent location affecting 18 (42%) of the 43 patients. The most common presenting symptom was dyspnea in 15 (35%) cases. For both primary and secondary tumors, dyspnea was the most common symptom and right atrium was most frequently involved. Sarcoma was the most common primary cardiac tumor while metastasis from renal cell carcinoma was the most common secondary tumor

Ngram-based statistical machine translation enhanced with multiple weighted reordering hypotheses

This paper describes the 2007 Ngram-based sta-tistical machine translation system developed at the TALP Research Center of the UPC (Uni-versitat Politecnica de Catalunya) in Barcelona. Emphasis is put on improvements and extensions of the previous years system, being highlighted and empirically compared. Mainly, these include a novel word ordering strategy based on: (1) sta-tistically monotonizing the training source cor-pus and (2) a novel reordering approach based on weighted reordering graphs. In addition, this system introduces a target language model based on statistical classes, a feature for out-of-domain units and an improved optimization procedure. The paper provides details of this system par-ticipation in the ACL 2007 SECOND WORK-SHOP ON STATISTICAL MACHINE TRANSLA-TION. Results on three pairs of languages are reported, namely from Spanish, French and Ger-man into English (and the other way round) for both the in-domain and out-of-domain tasks.

Incidence, in-hospital case-fatality rates, and management practices in Puerto Ricans hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction

OBJECTIVE: There are extremely limited data on minority populations, especially Hispanics, describing the clinical epidemiology of acute coronary disease. The aim of this study is to examine the incidence rate of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), in-hospital case-fatality rate (CFR), and management practices among residents of greater San Juan (Puerto Rico) who were hospitalized with an initial AMI. METHODS: Our trained study staff reviewed and independently validated the medical records of patients who had been hospitalized with possible AMI at any of the twelve hospitals located in greater San Juan during calendar year 2007. RESULTS: The incidence rate (# per 100,000 population) of 1,415 patients hospitalized with AMI increased with advancing age and were significantly higher for older patients for men (198) than they were for women (134). The average age of the study population was 64 years, and women comprised 45% of the study sample. Evidence-based cardiac therapies, e.g., aspirin, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers, and statins, were used with 60% of the hospitalized patients, and women were less likely than men to have received these therapies (59% vs. 65%) or to have undergone interventional cardiac procedures (47% vs. 59%) (p \u3c 0.05). The in-hospital CFR increased with advancing age and were higher for women (8.6%) than they were for men (6.0%) (p \u3c 0.05). CONCLUSION: Efforts are needed to reduce the magnitude of AMI, enhance the use of evidence-based cardiac therapies, reduce possible gender disparities, and improve the short-term prognoses of Puerto Rican patients hospitalized with an initial AMI

The Metabolic Syndrome in Hispanics – The Role of Inflammation

We report clinical and molecular mechanisms relating the pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory process in the development of the components of the metabolic syndrome, emphasizing the cardiovascular problems developed in these groups of patients, especially the Hispanic population. Namely, the incidence, component characteristics and complications of the metabolic syndrome in island Puerto Ricans are described and evidence is presented supporting the fact that the metabolic syndrome may be milder in Puerto Rico than in the mainland United States because it is characterized by less aggressive coronary artery disease and a relatively normal lipid profile. Moreover, data supports the fact that increased serum cholesterol levels produce less myocardial infarctions in Puerto Rico than in mainland Hispanics and Caucasians. In addition, the incidence of ventricular tachycardia, a complication caused by remodeling and ischemia of the heart, may be lower in Puerto Rico than in the United States, although the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome is higher in the island.</p