Patient injuries in operative rhinology during a ten-year period : Review of national patient insurance charts

Objectives: To assess factors contributing to patient injuries in operative rhinology. Design: Data of the accepted patient injury claims involving operative rhinology, between the years 2001 and 2011, were obtained from the Finnish Patient Insurance Centre registry. Two senior otolaryngologists analysed and evaluated the injury mechanisms. Main outcome measures: Analysis and classification of factors contributing to patient injuries. Results: During the ten-year study period, there were 67 patient injuries in operative rhinology, comprising 36% of all patient injuries in otorhinolaryngologic surgery. The majority (78%) of patients were treated in university or central hospitals and almost all (90%) by fully trained otolaryngology specialists. The factors contributing to the injuries were errors in surgical technique, like lesions to the orbit, skull base and meninges, and adjacent nerves, as well as mistakes with removable packings left in situ. Nearly half of the patients had undergone endoscopic sinus surgery. One patient died because of bleeding from the intracranial artery. Fourteen patients (21%) needed a re-operation due to the injury. Conclusions: Patient injuries in rhinology were caused by typical complications of common operations performed by otorhinolaryngology specialists. The increased volume of endoscopic sinus surgery was evident also in patient injuries.Peer reviewe

Prompt Decays of General Neutralino NLSPs at the Tevatron

Recent theoretical developments have shown that gauge mediation has a much larger parameter space of possible spectra and mixings than previously considered. Motivated by this, we explore the collider phenomenology of gauge mediation models where a general neutralino is the lightest MSSM superpartner (the NLSP), focusing on the potential reach from existing and future Tevatron searches. Promptly decaying general neutralino NLSPs can give rise to final states involving missing energy plus photons, Zs, Ws and/or Higgses. We survey the final states and determine those where the Tevatron should have the most sensitivity. We then estimate the reach of existing Tevatron searches in these final states and discuss new searches (or optimizations of existing ones) that should improve the reach. Finally we comment on the potential for discovery at the LHC.Comment: 41 pages, minor changes, added refs and discussion of previous literatur

Precision measurements of the top quark mass from the Tevatron in the pre-LHC era

The top quark is the heaviest of the six quarks of the Standard Model. Precise knowledge of its mass is important for imposing constraints on a number of physics processes, including interactions of the as yet unobserved Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is the only missing particle of the Standard Model, central to the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism and generation of particle masses. In this Review, experimental measurements of the top quark mass accomplished at the Tevatron, a proton-antiproton collider located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, are described. Topologies of top quark events and methods used to separate signal events from background sources are discussed. Data analysis techniques used to extract information about the top mass value are reviewed. The combination of several most precise measurements performed with the two Tevatron particle detectors, CDF and \D0, yields a value of \Mt = 173.2 \pm 0.9 GeV/$c^2$.Comment: This version contains the most up-to-date top quark mass averag

Measurements of the Production, Decay and Properties of the Top Quark: A Review

With the full Tevatron Run II and early LHC data samples, the opportunity for furthering our understanding of the properties of the top quark has never been more promising. Although the current knowledge of the top quark comes largely from Tevatron measurements, the experiments at the LHC are poised to probe top-quark production and decay in unprecedented regimes. Although no current top quark measurements conclusively contradict predictions from the standard model, the precision of most measurements remains statistically limited. Additionally, some measurements, most notably the forward-backward asymmetry in top quark pair production, show tantalizing hints of beyond-the-Standard-Model dynamics. The top quark sample is growing rapidly at the LHC, with initial results now public. This review examines the current status of top quark measurements in the particular light of searching for evidence of new physics, either through direct searches for beyond the standard model phenomena or indirectly via precise measurements of standard model top quark properties

Signals of CP Violation Beyond the MSSM in Higgs and Flavor Physics

We study an extension of the Higgs sector of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), considering the effects of new degrees of freedom at the TeV scale, and allowing for sources of CP violation beyond the MSSM (BMSSM). We analyze the impact of the BMSSM sources of CP violation on the Higgs collider phenomenology and on low energy flavor and CP violating observables. We identify distinct Higgs collider signatures that cannot be realized, either in the case without CP violating phases or in the CP violating MSSM, and investigate the prospects to probe them at the Tevatron and the LHC. The most striking benchmark scenario has three neutral Higgs bosons that all decay dominantly into W boson pairs and that are well within the reach of the 7 TeV LHC run. On the other hand, we also present scenarios with three Higgs bosons that have masses M_Hi > 150 GeV and decay dominantly into b bbar. Such scenarios are much more challenging to probe and can even lie completely outside the reach of the 7 TeV LHC run. We explore complementary scenarios with standard MSSM Higgs signals that allow to accommodate a sizable B_s mixing phase as indicated by D0, as well as the excess in B_s --> mu+ mu- candidates recently reported by CDF. We find that, in contrast to the MSSM, a minimal flavor violating soft sector is sufficient to generate significant corrections to CP violating observables in meson mixing, compatible with EDM constraints. In particular, a sizable B_s mixing phase, S_psiphi < 0.4, can be achieved for specific regions of parameter space. Such a large B_s mixing phase would unambiguously imply a sizable suppression of S_psiKs with respect to the SM prediction and a BR(B_s --> mu+ mu-) close to the 95% C.L. upper bound reported by CDF.Comment: 58 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables, v2 matches published versio

Matching Tree-Level Matrix Elements with Interleaved Showers

We present an implementation of the so-called CKKW-L merging scheme for combining multi-jet tree-level matrix elements with parton showers. The implementation uses the transverse-momentum-ordered shower with interleaved multiple interactions as implemented in PYTHIA8. We validate our procedure using e+e--annihilation into jets and vector boson production in hadronic collisions, with special attention to details in the algorithm which are formally sub-leading in character, but may have visible effects in some observables. We find substantial merging scale dependencies induced by the enforced rapidity ordering in the default PYTHIA8 shower. If this rapidity ordering is removed the merging scale dependence is almost negligible. We then also find that the shower does a surprisingly good job of describing the hardness of multi-jet events, as long as the hardest couple of jets are given by the matrix elements. The effects of using interleaved multiple interactions as compared to more simplistic ways of adding underlying-event effects in vector boson production are shown to be negligible except in a few sensitive observables. To illustrate the generality of our implementation, we also give some example results from di-boson production and pure QCD jet production in hadronic collisions.Comment: 44 pages, 23 figures, as published in JHEP, including all changes recommended by the refere

Constraints on Randall-Sundrum model from top-antitop production at the LHC

We study the top pair production cross section at the LHC in the context of Randall-Sundrum model including the Kaluza-Klein (KK) excited gravitons. It is shown that the recent measurement of the cross section of this process at the LHC restricts the parameter space in Randall-Sundrum (RS) model considerably. We show that the coupling parameter ($\frac{k}{\bar{M}_{pl}}$) is excluded by this measurement from 0.03 to 0.22 depending on the mass of first KK excited graviton ($m_1$). We also study the effect of KK excitations on the spin correlation of the top pairs. It is shown that the spin asymmetry in $t\bar{t}$ events is sensitive to the RS model parameters with a reasonable choice of model parameters.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Scalar-mediated ttˉt\bar t forward-backward asymmetry

A large forward-backward asymmetry in $t\bar t$ production, for large invariant mass of the $t\bar t$ system, has been recently observed by the CDF collaboration. Among the scalar mediated mechanisms that can explain such a large asymmetry, only the t-channel exchange of a color-singlet weak-doublet scalar is consistent with both differential and integrated $t\bar t$ cross section measurements. Constraints from flavor changing processes dictate a very specific structure for the Yukawa couplings of such a new scalar. No sizable deviation in the differential or integrated $t\bar t$ production cross section is expected at the LHC.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure and 2 tables. v2: Corrected Eqs.(50,51,74), adapted Fig.1, Tab.1 and relevant discussions. Extended discussion of top decay and single to

Association of breathing sound spectra with glottal dimensions in exercise-induced vocal cord dysfunction

The objective of this study was to evaluate associations between the breathing sound spectra and glottal dimensions in exercise-induced vocal cord dysfunction (EIVCD) during a bicycle ergometry test. Nineteen subjects (mean age 21.8 years and range 13-39 years) with suspected EIVCD were studied. Vocal folds were continuously imaged with videolaryngoscopy and breathing sounds were recorded during the bicycle exercise test. Twelve subjects showed paradoxical movement of the vocal folds during inspiration by the end of the exercise. In seven subjects, no abnormal reactions in vocal folds were found; they served as control subjects. The glottal quotient (interarytenoid distance divided by the anteroposterior glottal distance) was calculated. From the same time period, the tracheal-vocal tract resonance peaks of the breathing sound spectra were analyzed, and stridor sounds were detected and measured. Subjects with EIVCD showed significantly higher resonance peaks during the inspiratory phase compared to the expiratory phase (p <0.014). The glottal quotient decreased significantly in the EIVCD group (p <0.001), but not in the control group. 8 out of 12 EIVCD patients (67%) showed stridor sounds, while none of the controls did. There was a significant inverse correlation between the frequencies of the breathing sound resonance peaks and the glottal quotient. The findings indicate that the typical EIVCD reaction of a paradoxical approximation of the vocal folds during inspiration, measured here as a decrease in the glottal quotient, is significantly associated with an increase in inspiratory resonance peaks. The findings are applicable in the documentation of EIVCD findings using videolaryngoscopy, in addition to giving clinicians tools for EIVCD recognition. However, the study is limited by the small number of subjects.Peer reviewe