292 research outputs found
Metaâanalysis of oral antibiotics, in combination with preoperative intravenous antibiotics and mechanical bowel preparation the day before surgery, compared with intravenous antibiotics and mechanical bowel preparation alone to reduce surgicalâsite infections in elective colorectal surgery
Background:
Surgicalâsite infection (SSI) is a potentially serious complication following colorectal surgery. The present systematic review and metaâanalysis aimed to investigate the effect of preoperative oral antibiotics and mechanical bowel preparation (MBP) on SSI rates.
Methods:
A systematic review of PubMed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials was performed using appropriate keywords. Included were RCTs and observational studies reporting rates of SSI following elective colorectal surgery, in patients given preoperative oral antibiotic prophylaxis, in combination with intravenous (i.v.) antibiotic prophylaxis and MBP, compared with patients given only i.v. antibiotic prophylaxis with MBP. A metaâanalysis was undertaken.
Results:
Twentyâtwo studies (57â207 patients) were included, of which 14 were RCTs and eight observational studies. Preoperative oral antibiotics, in combination with i.v. antibiotics and MBP, were associated with significantly lower rates of SSI than combined i.v. antibiotics and MBP in RCTs (odds ratio (OR) 0·45, 95 per cent c.i. 0·34 to 0·59; Pâ<â0·001) and cohort studies (OR 0·47, 0·44 to 0·50; Pâ<â0·001). There was a similarly significant effect on SSI with use of a combination of preoperative oral aminoglycoside and erythromycin (OR 0·40, 0·25 to 0·64; Pâ<â0·001), or preoperative oral aminoglycoside and metronidazole (OR 0·51, 0·39 to 0·68; Pâ<â0·001). Preoperative oral antibiotics were significantly associated with reduced postoperative rates of anastomotic leak, ileus, reoperation, readmission and mortality in the cohort studies.
Conclusion:
Oral antibiotic prophylaxis, in combination with MBP and i.v. antibiotics, is superior to MBP and i.v. antibiotic prophylaxis alone in reducing SSI in elective colorectal surgery
Effect of preoperative oral antibiotics in combination with mechanical bowel preparation on inflammatory response and shortâterm outcomes following leftâsided colonic and rectal resections
Background:
Preoperative oral antibiotics in addition to intravenous antibiotics and mechanical bowel preparation (MBP) may influence the gut microbiome and reduce both the postoperative systemic inflammatory response to surgery and postoperative infective complications following colorectal resection. This propensity scoreâmatched study compared outcomes of patients undergoing leftâsided colonic or rectal resection with or without a combination of oral antibiotics and MBP.
Methods:
The addition of oral antibiotics and MBP to prophylactic intravenous antibiotics in leftâsided colonic and rectal resections was introduced in 2015â2016 at a single institution. Propensity score matching was undertaken to compare the effects of oral antibiotics plus MBP versus neither oral antibiotics nor MBP on the postoperative systemic inflammatory response and shortâterm outcomes in patients undergoing leftâsided colonic or rectal resection between 2013 and 2018.
Results:
Of 396 patients who had propensity score matching for host, anaesthetic and operative factors, 204 matched patients were identified. The addition of oral antibiotics and MBP was associated with a significantly reduced postoperative inflammatory response (reduced postoperative Glasgow Prognostic Score) on dayâ3 (odds ratio (OR) 0·66, 95 per cent c.i. 0·44 to 0·99; P â=â0·013) and dayâ4 (OR 0·46, 0·30 to 0·71; P â=â0·001). Significantly reduced overall complications (OR 0·31, 0·17 to 0·56; P â<â0·001), infective complications (OR 0·41, 0·22 to 0·77; P â=â0·011), surgicalâsite infection (OR 0·37, 0·17 to 0·83; P â=â0·024) and postoperative length of hospital stay (median 7âdays versus 8âdays in patients who had intravenous antibiotics alone; P â=â0·050) were also observed.
Conclusion:
Preoperative oral antibiotics and MBP in addition to prophylactic intravenous antibiotics were associated with a reduction in the postoperative systemic inflammatory response and postoperative complications in patients undergoing resectional leftâsided colonic or rectal surgery
The Centurion 18 telescope of the Wise Observatory
We describe the second telescope of the Wise Observatory, a 0.46-m Centurion
18 (C18) installed in 2005, which enhances significantly the observing
possibilities. The telescope operates from a small dome and is equipped with a
large-format CCD camera. In the last two years this telescope was intensively
used in a variety of monitoring projects.
The operation of the C18 is now automatic, requiring only start-up at the
beginning of a night and close-down at dawn. The observations are mostly
performed remotely from the Tel Aviv campus or even from the observer's home.
The entire facility was erected for a component cost of about 70k$ and a labor
investment of a total of one man-year.
We describe three types of projects undertaken with this new facility: the
measurement of asteroid light variability with the purpose of determining
physical parameters and binarity, the following-up of transiting extrasolar
planets, and the study of AGN variability. The successful implementation of the
C18 demonstrates the viability of small telescopes in an age of huge
light-collectors, provided the operation of such facilities is very efficient.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, some figures quality was degraded, accepted for
publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc
Efficient photoionization for barium ion trapping using a dipole-allowed resonant two-photon transition
Two efficient and isotope-selective resonant two-photon ionization techniques
for loading barium ions into radio-frequency (RF)-traps are demonstrated. The
scheme of using a strong dipole-allowed transition at \lambda=553 nm as a first
step towards ionization is compared to the established technique of using a
weak intercombination line (\lambda=413 nm). An increase of two orders of
magnitude in the ionization efficiency is found favoring the transition at 553
nm. This technique can be implemented using commercial all-solid-state laser
systems and is expected to be advantageous compared to other narrowband
photoionization schemes of barium in cases where highest efficiency and
isotope-selectivity are required.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Plankton lattices and the role of chaos in plankton patchiness
Spatiotemporal and interspecies irregularities in planktonic populations have been widely observed. Much research into the drivers of such plankton patches has been initiated over the past few decades but only recently have the dynamics of the interacting patches themselves been considered. We take a coupled lattice approach to model continuous-in-time plankton patch dynamics, as opposed to the more common continuum type reaction-diffusion-advection model, because it potentially offers a broader scope of application and numerical study with relative ease. We show that nonsynchronous plankton patch dynamics (the discrete analog of spatiotemporal irregularity) arise quite naturally for patches whose underlying dynamics are chaotic. However, we also observe that for parameters in a neighborhood of the chaotic regime, smooth generalized synchronization of nonidentical patches is more readily supported which reduces the incidence of distinct patchiness. We demonstrate that simply associating the coupling strength with measurements of (effective) turbulent diffusivity results in a realistic critical length of the order of 100 km, above which one would expect to observe unsynchronized behavior. It is likely that this estimate of critical length may be reduced by a more exact interpretation of coupling in turbulent flows
An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics
For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types
Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in âs = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fbâ1 of protonâproton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC
provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of
lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with
a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the
transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the
anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the
nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of
the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp.
Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in
the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies
smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating
nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and
transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of
inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous
measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables,
submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are
available at
http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02
Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment
This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and
W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with
the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and
the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto
the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions
f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV
and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw
> 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour,
are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017
+/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second
include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables,
revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio
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