Hearing loss in Takayasu's arteritis: a role for hyperbaric oxygen therapy?

In the scientific community, there is growing interest regarding associated symptoms in Takayasu’s arteritis (TA), an autoimmune condition that mainly affects the medium and large arteries. Hearing loss (HL) is a rare complication of TA that is often overlooked and has severe consequences on the quality of life. HL mainly presents as sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) and responds to corticosteroid therapy. In the authors’ opinion, the reasons for misdiagnosing HL in patients with TA are lack of evidence re- garding this rare complication and because TA involves large caliber arteries, instead of small vessels that are typical of the inner ear. We recently used HBOT for a 36-year-old woman with TA, who had two SSNHL episodes in different ears in an 11-month period and observed a significant improvement in the patient's hearing. Although this was a single case finding and HBOT was administered together with steroid therapy, the significant recovery of HL in both ears following this therapeutic approach may be worth sharing with the scientific community. In conclusion, we recommend that awareness for inner ear involvement in TA should increase and that HL should be considered a possible complication of TA and should be treated with corticosteroid therapy and, after collecting further evidence, HBOT

Elliptic Flow and Shear Viscosity of the Shattered Color Glass Condensate

In this talk, we report on our results about the computation of the elliptic flow of the quark-gluon-plasma produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions, simulating the expansion of the fireball by solving the relativistic Boltzmann equation for the parton distribution function tuned at a fixed shear viscosity to entropy density ratio $\eta/s$. We emphasize the role of saturation in the initial gluon spectrum modelling the shattering of the color glass condensate, causing the initial distribution to be out of equilibrium. We find that the saturation reduces the efficiency in building-up the elliptic flow, even if the thermalization process is quite fast $\tau_{therm} \approx 0.8 \,\rm fm/c$. and the pressure isotropization even faster $\tau_{isotr} \approx 0.3 \,\rm fm/c$. The impact of the initial non-equilibrium manifests for non-central collisions and can modify the estimate of the viscosity respect to the assumption of full thermalization in $p_T$-space.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. Talk given at XIV Convegno su Problemi di Fisica Nucleare Teorica, 29-31 October 2013, Cortona, Ital

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Index de les obres ressenyades: GAZIEL, En las trincheras. El reportero que mejor narró la primera Guerra Mundial

Thermalization, Isotropization and Elliptic Flow from Nonequilibrium Initial Conditions with a Saturation Scale

In this article we report on our results about the computation of the elliptic flow of the quark-gluon-plasma produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions, simulating the expansion of the fireball by solving the relativistic Boltzmann equation for the parton distribution function tuned at a fixed shear viscosity to entropy density ratio $\eta/s$. Our main goal is to put emphasis on the role of a saturation scale in the initial gluon spectrum, which makes the initial distribution far from a thermalized one. We find that the presence of the saturation scale reduces the efficiency in building-up the elliptic flow, even if the thermalization process is quite fast $\tau_{therm} \approx 0.8 \,\rm fm/c$ and the pressure isotropization even faster $\tau_{isotr} \approx 0.3 \,\rm fm/c$. The impact of the non-equilibrium implied by the saturation scale manifests for non-central collisions and can modify the estimate of the viscosity respect to the assumption of full thermalization in $p_T$-space. We find that the estimate of $\eta/s$ is modified from $\eta/s \approx 2/4\pi$ to $\eta/s \approx 1/4\pi$ at RHIC and from $\eta/s \approx 3/4\pi$ to $\eta/s \approx 2/4\pi$ at LHC. We complete our investigation by a study of the thermalization and isotropization times of the fireball for different initial conditions and values of $\eta/s$ showing how the latter affects both isotropization and thermalization. Lastly, we have seen that the range of values explored by the phase-space distribution function $f$ is such that at $p_T<0.5\, \rm GeV$ the inner part of the fireball stays with occupation number significantly larger than unity despite the fast longitudinal expansion, which might suggest the possibility of the formation of a transient Bose-Einstein Condensate.Comment: Published versio