Cost-effectiveness of Clinical Pathway in Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery

Few studies have been devoted to the exploration of the effect of clinical pathways on coronary artery diseases treated with coronary artery bypass (CAB) surgery. This study was aimed to investigate the cost and effectiveness of the clinical pathway on CAB surgery in a medical center. With a retrospective dataset in 2003-2007, 212 CAB surgery patients were included. Data of the costs and postoperative complication occurrence and length of stays were the focus and patient demographics, surgical risk indicator EuroSCORE, surgical conditions were collected. It revealed that there was differentiation across specified cost items in beating heart CAB surgery patients, but not for heart arrest CAB surgery patients with and without clinical pathways enrolled. In addition, there was no difference in postoperative complication occurrence in CAB surgery patients enrolled into clinical pathways. However, robotic beating heart CAB surgery patients enrolled clinical pathways were shown to have less postoperative ordinary ward stay than those not enrolled clinical pathways. CAB surgery patients' age and surgical risks were related to their postoperative lengths of stay to some extent

Effect of Ordering on Spinodal Decomposition of Liquid-Crystal/Polymer Mixtures

Partially phase-separated liquid-crystal/polymer dispersions display highly fibrillar domain morphologies that are dramatically different from the typical structures found in isotropic mixtures. To explain this, we numerically explore the coupling between phase ordering and phase separation kinetics in model two-dimensional fluid mixtures phase separating into a nematic phase, rich in liquid crystal, coexisting with an isotropic phase, rich in polymer. We find that phase ordering can lead to fibrillar networks of the minority polymer-rich phase

NTMG (N-terminal Truncated Mutants Generator for cDNA): an automatic multiplex PCR assays design for generating various N-terminal truncated cDNA mutants

The sequential deletion method is generally used to locate the functional domain of a protein. With this method, in order to find the various N-terminal truncated mutants, researchers have to investigate the ATG-like codons, to design various multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) forward primers and to do several PCR experiments. This web server (N-terminal Truncated Mutants Generator for cDNA) will automatically generate groups of forward PCR primers and the corresponding reverse PCR primers that can be used in a single batch of a multiplex PCR experiment to extract the various N-terminal truncated mutants. This saves much time and money for those who use the sequential deletion method in their research. This server is available at http://oblab.cs.nchu.edu.tw:8080/WebSDL/

CFD simulations of the spent fuel pool in the loss of coolant accident

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.The study utilized the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methodology to investigate the thermal hydraulic behavior during the hypothetical event of normal operation and loss of cooling accident occurring at spent fuel pool. The boiling time, water level decreasing rate, fuel exposure time and temperature response after fuel exposure for the nuclear power plants under the accident were predicted in this study. We also analyze the flow and heat transfer for the single Atrium-10 fuel bundle. The details of the physics will be shown in this study. The results indicate that the fuel temperature in the pool will not exceed 1200°C to avoid the water-metal reaction after failure of RHR system for 4.578 days. We find that the velocity in the bundle are much faster than outside of the bundle under the LOCA accident.dc201

The significance of surgically modifying soft tissue phenotype around fixed dental prostheses: An American Academy of Periodontology best evidence review

BackgroundThis systematic review endeavored to investigate the effect of soft tissue phenotype modification therapy (PhMT- s) at sites with a tooth or an implant supported fixed dental prosthesis.MethodsA comprehensive literature search was conducted by two independent examiners to identify relevant studies reporting differences in clinical, esthetic, or radiographic outcomes of interest between sites underwent PhMT- s and sites that remained untreated. Risk of bias assessment was calculated for all included studies. Meta- analyses involving endpoints of interest were performed when feasible.ResultsNo controlled studies pertaining to tooth sites were identified. A total of six articles reporting on the outcomes of buccal soft tissue phenotype modification around implants were selected, of which, five were included in the meta- analyses. Quantitative analyses showed a weighted mean difference (WMD) of 0.98 mm (95% CI = 0.25 to 1.72 mm, P = 0.009) for change of tissue thickness; a WMD of - 4.87% (95% CI = - 34.27 to 24.53%, P = 0.75) for bleeding on probing (BOP); a WMD of 0.36 mm (95% CI = 0.12 to 0.59 mm, P = 0.003) for mucosal recession (MR); a WMD of 0.13 mm (95% CI = - 0.11 to 0.36 mm, P = 0.30 for probing depth (PD); a WMD of 1.08 (95% CI = - 0.39 to 2.55, P = 0.15) for pink esthetic score (PES), and a WMD of 0.40 mm (95% CI = - 0.34 to 1.14 mm, P = 0.28) for marginal bone loss (MBL).ConclusionsSurgical modification of peri- implant soft tissue phenotype via PhMT- s may decrease the amount of MR. Future clinical trials are needed to warrant the clinical benefits of modifying soft tissue phenotype around tooth- supported restorations.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154660/1/jper10458-sup-0006-figureS1F.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154660/2/jper10458_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154660/3/jper10458-sup-0001-figureS1A.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154660/4/jper10458-sup-0005-figureS1E.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154660/5/jper10458-sup-0004-figureS1D.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154660/6/jper10458-sup-0003-figureS1C.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154660/7/jper10458-sup-0002-figureS1B.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154660/8/jper10458.pd

Correlation dynamics between electrons and ions in the fragmentation of D2_2 molecules by short laser pulses

We studied the recollision dynamics between the electrons and D$_2^+$ ions following the tunneling ionization of D$_2$ molecules in an intense short pulse laser field. The returning electron collisionally excites the D$_2^+$ ion to excited electronic states from there D$_2^+$ can dissociate or be further ionized by the laser field, resulting in D$^+$ + D or D$^+$ + D$^+$, respectively. We modeled the fragmentation dynamics and calculated the resulting kinetic energy spectrum of D$^+$ to compare with recent experiments. Since the recollision time is locked to the tunneling ionization time which occurs only within fraction of an optical cycle, the peaks in the D$^+$ kinetic energy spectra provides a measure of the time when the recollision occurs. This collision dynamics forms the basis of the molecular clock where the clock can be read with attosecond precision, as first proposed by Corkum and coworkers. By analyzing each of the elementary processes leading to the fragmentation quantitatively, we identified how the molecular clock is to be read from the measured kinetic energy spectra of D$^+$ and what laser parameters be used in order to measure the clock more accurately.Comment: 13 pages with 14 figure