Biography of Professor Chen zhan-quan

High strength titanium alloys find a significant number of applications throughout the aircraft industry for gas turbine engine and airframe components. Ti-6A1-4V is an alloy that has been around since the 1950’s and has been used extensively for fan blades, disks, and superplastically formed and diffusion bonded structures. This alloy has been studied and tested in virtually every conceivable way and a great deal is known about the material in terms of its capabilities, yet there are still lingering performance issues that evade researchers. A recent initiative by the Air Force to better understand conventional Ti alloys from the standpoint of High Cycle Fatigue (HCF) has brought to light some intriguing research in the nondestructive characterization of polycrystalline titanium alloys. The major goal of this research is to detect and characterize the microscopic defects or fatigue damage precursors associated with HCF and to understand some of the physical characteristics of the nucleation and growth of low-level, mechanically imparted damage. From a nondestructive inspection viewpoint the goal boils down to finding and interpreting signals from smaller and smaller “defects.” With this approach, the identification of smaller defects early in the service life of the component presumably leads to higher reliability of the aircraft through the removal of flawed components for rework, scrap, or further study

Prehospital intravenous fentanyl to patients with hip fracture: an observational cohort study of risk factors for analgesic non-treatment

BACKGROUND: Patients with proximal femoral neck fracture have a high short-term mortality, a high risk of postoperative complications, and impaired quality of life. One of the challenges related to the prehospital treatment of these patients is to administer systemic opioids fast and properly. Effective analgesic prehospital treatment ought be initiated rapidly in order to alleviate the stress that follows acute pain, to facilitate transportation, and to improve quality of care. The objectives of this study were to explore the prevalence of prehospital administration of intravenous fentanyl to patients with proximal femoral neck fracture in the ambulances and to assess risk factors for analgesic non-treatment.METHODS: This was a register-based observational cohort study of patients with proximal femoral neck fracture from the North Denmark Region transported by ambulance. The patients were identified via the Danish Interdisciplinary Hip Fracture Registry over a 3-year period from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2014. This hospital registry contains data on several patient characteristics used for the risk factor analysis. Data on prehospital treatment (intravenous fentanyl) and patient monitoring were registered in an electronic prehospital patient record. A modified Poisson regression with robust standard errors was carried out with intravenous fentanyl as the primary binary outcome and the following explanatory variables: age, sex, Charlson Comorbidity Index score, housing, body mass index, type of fracture, fracture displacement, prior consultation with general practitioner, dispatch triage level, and time with ambulance personnel.RESULTS: In total, 2,140 patients with proximal femoral neck fracture were transported by ambulance, of which 584 (27.3%, 95% CI: 25.4-29.2) were treated with intravenous fentanyl. Risk factors for non-treatment were: older age, male sex (RR 0.77, 95% CI: 0.64-0.91), institutional housing (RR 0.72, 95% CI: 0.56-0.92), medial fracture (RR 0.74, 95% CI: 0.60-0.92), short time with ambulance personnel, Charlson Comorbidity Index score &gt; 1, year of fracture (2011), low levels of urgency at dispatch, and if seen by general practitioners prior to transport.DISCUSSION: Education of ambulance personnel in assessing and treating patients with hip fracture seems to be required. Also, future studies should consider alternative or supportive pain treatment options with suitable analgesic effects and side effects.CONCLUSIONS: Few patients with proximal femoral neck fracture were treated with intravenous fentanyl, and several risk factors were associated with prehospital analgesic non-treatment. Future prospective studies should explore covariates of socioeconomic, cultural, and psychological origin to provide further insight into the multifactorial causes of non-treatment of acute pain.</p