Hormona Paratiróideia Como Factor Predictivo de Hipocalcemia Após Tiroidectomia: Estudo Prospectivo em 100 Doentes

INTRODUCTION: Hypocalcemia is a frequent complication after total thyroidectomy and the main reason for prolonged hospitalization of these patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We studied prospectively 112 patients who underwent total or completation thyroidectomy between June 2012 and November 2013. Twelve patients with preoperative changes in parathyroid function were excluded. Parathyroid hormone and calcium levels were determined pre-operatively, immediately after surgery, on 1st day and on 14th day after surgery. RESULTS: Of the 100 patients enrolled, 60 have developed hypocalcaemia (60%) but only 14 patients had symptomatic hypocalcaemia. It mostly occurs 24 hours after surgery (76.7%). It was permanent in 3 patients and temporary in the others. In the 60 patients with hypocalcaemia, it has been found hypoparathyroidism in 19 patients immediately after surgery, in 14 patients on 1st day but only 3 had hypoparathyroidism (patients with permanent hypocalcaemia). Comparing the group of patients with and without hypocalcaemia we found a decrease of parathyroid hormone in both (immediately after surgery and on 1st day) but was more important in the hypocalcaemia group (p = 0.004 and p 19.4% determined on the 1st day (sensitivity = 82%; specificity = 63%). DISCUSSION: In our study there was a high incidence of hypocalcemia (60%), expressed predominantly 24 hours after surgery and conditioned, in these patients, a longer hospital stay. However, only 3 patients (3%) had permanent hypocalcemia. We still found a match in the oscillation of serum calcium levels and parathyroid hormone which identified the decrease in parathyroid hormone on the first day after surgery as a reliable predictor of hypocalcemia. CONCLUSION: Decrease of parathyroid hormone levels > 19.4% determined on 1st day is a good predictor of hypocalcemia after total / completation thyroidectomy, allowing to identify patients at higher risk of hypocalcemia, medicate them prophylactically and get early and safe discharges.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Acclimatization of Tapeinochilos ananassae plantlets in association with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.

The objective of this work was to assess the potential of three isolates of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to promote growth of micropropagated plantlets of Tapeinochilos ananassae during acclimatization. The experiment was carried out in greenhouse, in a completely randomized block design, with four inoculation treatments: non-inoculated control and plants inoculated with Glomus etunicatum, Acaulospora longula or Gigaspora albida, with ten replicates. After 90 days, the following parameters were evaluated: survival rate, height, leaf and tiller number, leaf area, fresh and dry biomass, contents of macro- and micronutrients in the root and shoot, glomerospore number, and mycorrhizal colonization. The survival percentage was 100%, except for plants inoculated with G. albida (80%). The isolate G. etunicatum is more suitable for plant development, since it improves survival, growth, dry matter production, nutritional status, and vigor of T. ananassae micropropagated plants

Comparing Mixed & Integer Programming vs. Constraint Programming by solving Job-Shop Scheduling Problems

Scheduling is a key factor for operations management as well as for business success. From industrial Job-shop Scheduling problems (JSSP), many optimization challenges have emerged since de 1960s when improvements have been continuously required such as bottlenecks allocation, lead-time reductions and reducing response time to requests.  With this in perspective, this work aims to discuss 3 different optimization models for minimizing Makespan. Those 3 models were applied on 17 classical problems of examples JSSP and produced different outputs.  The first model resorts on Mixed and Integer Programming (MIP) and it resulted on optimizing 60% of the studied problems. The other models were based on Constraint Programming (CP) and approached the problem in two different ways: a) model CP1 is a standard IBM algorithm whereof restrictions have an interval structure that fail to solve 53% of the proposed instances, b) Model CP-2 approaches the problem with disjunctive constraints and optimized 88% of the instances. In this work, each model is individually analyzed and then compared considering: i) Optimization success performance, ii) Computational processing time, iii) Greatest Resource Utilization and, iv) Minimum Work-in-process Inventory. Results demonstrated that CP-2 presented best results on criteria i and ii, but MIP was superior on criteria iii and iv and those findings are discussed at the final section of this work

Fungos micorrízicos arbusculares (FMA) e rizobactérias promotoras de crescimento de plantas (RPCP) na aclimatização de Zingiber spectabile Griff. micropropagado (Zingiberaceae).

O objetivo do trabalho foi avaliar o potencial de FMA e RPCP, isolados e/ou combinados (em dupla inoculação) na aclimatização de Z. spectabi/e