Stepping Up Glaucoma Management: When and How?

Glaucoma management aims to preserve patients’ quality of life by halting progressive visual loss. Intraocular pressure reduction is the pivotal strategy: we establish a “target” pressure based on extent of visual damage, threat to visual performance, risk profile for further damage, pre-treatment pressure levels, family history and a patient’s life expectancy. Once an acceptable treatment regimen has been instituted, review ascertains whether damage has advanced and/or the risk of progressive damage has changed. Increased damage and/or increased risk of progressive damage suggest accelerated treatment, and lowered target pressures

Clinical efficacy and neuroprotective effects of brimonidine in the management of glaucoma and ocular hypertension

Elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) is a significant risk factor for the development and progression of glaucomatous optic neuropathy, but increasingly we appreciate that non-pressure dependent factors, are key to our understanding of the pathophysiology of these neurodegenerative diseases, that target the retinal ganglion cell. As we try to expand therapy beyond IOP control, medications are being assessed for their neuroprotective abilities. Brimonidine is an effective ocular hypotensive treatment both as a first and second line agent, in the management of glaucoma and ocular hypertension. Brimonidine tartrate 0.2% is generally safe and well tolerated, with its safety profile further enhanced in the altered formulation brimonidine-Purite™ 0.1%. Beyond brimonidine’s pressure lowering capacity, laboratory and early clinical evidence supports its neuroprotective potential. We await validation of this in human clinical trials

A comparison of global indices between the Medmont Automated Perimeter and the Humphrey Field Analyzer

Background: Two commonly used perimeters in Australia are the Humphrey Field Analyzer II (HFA) and the Medmont Automated Perimeter (MAP). Each device describes the visual field in terms of numerical values called global indices; however, these values are not interchangeable between devices. This study was designed to directly compare the global indices of HFA and MAP visual fields. Methods: 63 subjects who had suspected glaucoma, ocular hypertension or glaucoma, or were normal controls were recruited selectively. Each patient was tested with the MAP and HFA. Global indices were then compared between tests. These included mean deviation (MD) and pattern standard deviation (PSD) from the HFA and average defect (AD) and pattern defect (PD) from the MAP. Results: The MD and PSD results were strongly correlated with the AD and PD results, respectively. The relationship between them could be described in terms of two polynomial equations: AD = 0.94+1.31(MD)+0.02(MD) 2 and PD = 2.21(PSD)-0.05(PSD) 2 -0.006. These non-linear relationships may be the result of differences in testing method (test stimulus spectrum, number of testing locations or background luminance) or differences in the way each global index was calculated. Conclusion: The AD and PD results obtained from the MAP may be substituted for the MD and PSD results from the HFA after appropriate conversion

Nuclear Medicine Imaging of Locally Advanced Laryngeal and Hypopharyngeal Cancer

The diagnostic capabilities of nuclear medicine imaging in the detection and assessment of the spread of laryngeal/hypopharyngeal cancer were studied. A total of 40 patients with histologically verified laryngeal and hypopharyngeal cancer and 20 patients with benign laryngeal lesions were included into the study. Submucosal injections of {99m}Tc-MIBI and {99m}Tc-Alotech were made around the tumor. Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) was performed 20 minutes after the injection of {99m}Tc-MIBI. Sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) were detected in 26 patients. In 18 hours after the injection of {99m}Tc-Alotech, SPECT was performed. In 24 hours after the injection of {99m}Tc-Alotech, intraoperative SLN detection was performed using Gamma Finder II. SPECT with {99m}Tc-MIBI revealed laryngeal and hypopharyngeal tumors in 38 of the 40 patients. The {99m}Tc-MIBI uptake in metastatic lymph nodes was visualized in 2 (17%) of the 12 patients. Twenty eight SLNs were detected by SPECT and 31 SLNs were identified using the intraoperative gamma probe. The percentage of {99m}Tc-Alotech in the SLN was 5-10% of the radioactivity in the injection site by SPECT and 18-33% by intraoperative gamma probe detection. Thus, SPECT with {99m}Tc-MIBI is an effective tool for the diagnosis of laryngeal/hypopharyngeal cancer. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of this technique were 95%, 80% and 92%, respectively. The use of {99m}Tc-Alotech for the detection of SLNs in patients with laryngeal/hypopharyngeal cancer is characterized by 92.8% sensitivity

Metodologia Para Estimação Das Constantes ópticas E Da Espessura De Um Filme Fino Utilizando Minimização Irrestrita

Metodologia para estimação das constantes ópticas e da espessura de um filme fino utilizando minimização irrestrita, dita metodologia destina-se a possibilitar a estimação das constantes ópticas e da espessura de um filme fino, baseada na minimização irrestrita.BR9901600 (A)G01B11/06G01B11/06BR19999901600G01B11/06G01B11/0

Frequency of EGFR mutations in non-small cell lung cancer patients: screening data from West Siberia

BACKGROUN

A non-local method for robustness analysis of floating point programs

Robustness is a standard correctness property which intuitively means that if the input to the program changes less than a fixed small amount then the output changes only slightly. This notion is useful in the analysis of rounding error for floating point programs because it helps to establish bounds on output errors introduced by both measurement errors and by floating point computation. Compositional methods often do not work since key constructs---like the conditional and the while-loop---are not robust. We propose a method for proving the robustness of a while-loop. This method is non-local in the sense that instead of breaking the analysis down to single lines of code, it checks certain global properties of its structure. We show the applicability of our method on two standard algorithms: the CORDIC computation of the cosine and Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm.Comment: QAPL - Tenth Workshop on Quantitative Aspects of Programming Languages (2012

The source ambiguity problem: Distinguishing the effects of grammar and processing on acceptability judgments

Judgments of linguistic unacceptability may theoretically arise from either grammatical deviance or significant processing difficulty. Acceptability data are thus naturally ambiguous in theories that explicitly distinguish formal and functional constraints. Here, we consider this source ambiguity problem in the context of Superiority effects: the dispreference for ordering a wh-phrase in front of a syntactically “superior” wh-phrase in multiple wh-questions, e.g., What did who buy? More specifically, we consider the acceptability contrast between such examples and so-called D-linked examples, e.g., Which toys did which parents buy? Evidence from acceptability and self-paced reading experiments demonstrates that (i) judgments and processing times for Superiority violations vary in parallel, as determined by the kind of wh-phrases they contain, (ii) judgments increase with exposure, while processing times decrease, (iii) reading times are highly predictive of acceptability judgments for the same items, and (iv) the effects of the complexity of the wh-phrases combine in both acceptability judgments and reading times. This evidence supports the conclusion that D-linking effects are likely reducible to independently motivated cognitive mechanisms whose effects emerge in a wide range of sentence contexts. This in turn suggests that Superiority effects, in general, may owe their character to differential processing difficulty