274 research outputs found
Efficacy of autologous bone marrow buffy coat grafting combined with core decompression in patients with avascular necrosis of femoral head: a prospective, double-blinded, randomized, controlled study
Introduction
Avascular necrosis of femoral head (ANFH) is a progressive disease that often leads to hip joint dysfunction and even disability in young patients. Although the standard treatment, which is core decompression, has the advantage of minimal invasion, the efficacy is variable. Recent studies have shown that implantation of bone marrow containing osteogenic precursors into necrotic lesion of ANFH may be promising for the treatment of ANFH.
Methods
A prospective, double-blinded, randomized controlled trial was conducted to examine the effect of bone-marrow buffy coat (BBC) grafting combined with core decompression for the treatment of ANFH. Forty-five patients (53 hips) with Ficat stage I to III ANFH were recruited. The hips were allocated to the control group (core decompression + autologous bone graft) or treatment group (core decompression + autologous bone graft with BBC). Both patients and assessors were blinded to the treatment options. The clinical symptoms and disease progression were assessed as the primary and secondary outcomes.
Results
At the final follow-up (24 months), there was a significant relief in pain (P \u3c0.05) and clinical joint symptoms as measured by the Lequesne index (P \u3c0.05) and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (P \u3c0.05) in the treatment group. In addition, 33.3% of the hips in the control group have deteriorated to the next stage after 24 months post-procedure, whereas only 8% in the treatment group had further deterioration (P \u3c0.05). More importantly, the non-progression rates for stage I/II hips were 100% in the treatment group and 66.7% in the control group.
Conclusion
Implantation of the autologous BBC grafting combined with core decompression is effective to prevent further progression for the early stages of ANFH.
Trial registration
ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT01613612. Registered 13 December 2011
Continuous and Distribution-free Probabilistic Wind Power Forecasting: A Conditional Normalizing Flow Approach
We present a data-driven approach for probabilistic wind power forecasting
based on conditional normalizing flow (CNF). In contrast with the existing,
this approach is distribution-free (as for non-parametric and quantile-based
approaches) and can directly yield continuous probability densities, hence
avoiding quantile crossing. It relies on a base distribution and a set of
bijective mappings. Both the shape parameters of the base distribution and the
bijective mappings are approximated with neural networks. Spline-based
conditional normalizing flow is considered owing to its non-affine
characteristics. Over the training phase, the model sequentially maps input
examples onto samples of base distribution, given the conditional contexts,
where parameters are estimated through maximum likelihood. To issue
probabilistic forecasts, one eventually maps samples of the base distribution
into samples of a desired distribution. Case studies based on open datasets
validate the effectiveness of the proposed model, and allows us to discuss its
advantages and caveats with respect to the state of the art.Comment: The second revision to IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energ
Responses of tidal modification and nonlinearity to large-scale sequential harbor constructions in the northeastern China
Herbal Medicine after Interventional Therapy in Cardiovascular Diseases: Efficacy, Mechanisms, and Safety
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