Complications of Vehicular-Related Injuries: A Scoping Review of Literature

Context: Complications of vehicular-related trauma contribute to the overall morbidity, and ultimately the costs, of road accidents. However, direct evidence on the burden of complications of vehicular-related trauma injuries is not directly explored. This scoping review aims to provide a summary of the relevant literature on the most significant acute complications and consequences of trauma caused by motor vehicle accidents or similar mechanisms. Evidence Acquisition: Multiple electronic databases, as well as grey literature, were explored. Studies were included in this scoping review if they evaluated adult patients with acute complications of traumatic injury caused by motor vehicle trauma or similar mechanisms. Results: Trauma-related complications contribute to increasing mortality of patients. Complications of traumatic injuries are also the main cause of patients’ readmission to hospitals. Various studies report the rate of high-grade complications around 10%, but the overall rate of complications, ignoring severity, is approximately 60%. Depending on the surveyed population, different complications are identified as the most prevalent, but pneumonia is identified as the most prevalent complication in the majority of studies. The most important factors predicting the occurrence of complications in trauma patients are older age and poor Glasgow coma scale. Conclusions: Complications of trauma-related injuries are significant factors affecting the outcome of patients. There has been limited research directly exploring this topic, possibly due to the difficulty of undertaking such studies. A particularly important research topic is the prevention and management of complications in elderly trauma patients with comorbidities. In conclusion, complications of trauma related injuries are significant considerations for clinical practice and research

A clinical and haemodynamic investigation into the role of calf perforating vein surgery in patients with venous ulceration and deep venous incompetence

Objective:To determine the clinical efficacy and local haemodynamic effects of perforating vein surgery in ulcerated limbs with combined deep and perforating vein incompetence.Design:Prospective, interventional study.Materials and methods:Seven ulcerated limbs with combined primary deep and perforating vein incompetence were studied. Clinical efficacy was determined by ultimate ulcer healing and reduction in ulcer area, local haemodynamics were assessed at three sites with photoplethysmographic 90% venous refilling times (PPG RT90); both assessments were performed pre- and 1-month postoperatively.Results:None of the ulcers healed following perforating vein surgery, the median (range) ulcer areas pre- and postoperatively were 31 (7–685) cm2 and 35.5 (7–796) cm2 (Wilcoxon p = 0.07). Preoperative PPG RT90 demonstrated a global abnormality of venous function at all sites examined that persisted after perforating vein surgery.Conclusion:In the presence of deep venous incompetence perforating vein surgery had no influence on venous function or ulcer healing. We conclude that perforating vein surgery is not indicated for the treatment of venous ulceration in limbs with primary deep venous incompetence

Has the reporting quality of published randomised controlled trial protocols improved since the SPIRIT statement? A methodological study

OBJECTIVES: To determine the reporting quality of published randomised controlled trial (RCT) protocols before and after the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials (SPIRIT) statemen

Multiwavelength Studies of Young OB Associations

We discuss how contemporary multiwavelength observations of young OB-dominated clusters address long-standing astrophysical questions: Do clusters form rapidly or slowly with an age spread? When do clusters expand and disperse to constitute the field star population? Do rich clusters form by amalgamation of smaller subclusters? What is the pattern and duration of cluster formation in massive star forming regions (MSFRs)? Past observational difficulties in obtaining good stellar censuses of MSFRs have been alleviated in recent studies that combine X-ray and infrared surveys to obtain rich, though still incomplete, censuses of young stars in MSFRs. We describe here one of these efforts, the MYStIX project, that produced a catalog of 31,784 probable members of 20 MSFRs. We find that age spread within clusters are real in the sense that the stars in the core formed after the cluster halo. Cluster expansion is seen in the ensemble of (sub)clusters, and older dispersing populations are found across MSFRs. Direct evidence for subcluster merging is still unconvincing. Long-lived, asynchronous star formation is pervasive across MSFRs.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures. To appear in "The Origin of Stellar Clusters", edited by Steven Stahler, Springer, 2017, in pres

Changing responses during the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparison of psychological wellbeing and work-related quality of life of UK health and social care workers

Aim: to explore the psychological wellbeing and work-related quality of life amongst United Kingdom (UK) health and social care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subject and methods: Health and social care professionals within nursing, midwifery, allied health professions, social care and social work occupations working in the UK during the pandemic were recruited. Repeated cross-sectional online surveys were conducted during six time periods of the pandemic (May–July 2020, November–February 2021, May–July 2021, November 2021–February 2022, May–July 2022 and November 2022–February 2023). Results: Over 14,000 participants completed the surveys during the data collection periods. The findings revealed that over the pandemic, psychological wellbeing and work-related quality of life scores significantly decreased. Conclusions: The overall psychological wellbeing and work-related quality of life of health and social care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly declined. Further research is warranted on the lasting impact of the pandemic on this workforce. The health and social care workforce needs support to prevent further deterioration and to rebuild its wellbeing and resilience

The Conformal Transformation in General Single Field Inflation with Non-Minimal Coupling

The method of a conformal transformation is applied to a general class of single field inflation models with non-minimal coupling to gravity and non-standard kinetic terms, in order to reduce the cosmological perturbative calculation to the conventional minimal coupling case to all orders in perturbation theory. Our analysis is made simple by the fact that all perturbation variables in the comoving gauge are conformally invariant to all orders. The structure of the vacuum, on which cosmological correlation functions are evaluated, is also discussed. We show how quantization in the Jordan frame for non-minimally coupled inflation models can be equivalently implemented in the Einstein frame. It is thereafter argued that the general N-point cosmological correlation functions (of the curvature perturbation) are independent of the conformal frame.Comment: 15 pages, no figure, references adde

Low-mass pre--main-sequence stars in the Magellanic Clouds

[Abridged] The stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) suggests that sub-solar stars form in very large numbers. Most attractive places for catching low-mass star formation in the act are young stellar clusters and associations, still (half-)embedded in star-forming regions. The low-mass stars in such regions are still in their pre--main-sequence (PMS) evolutionary phase. The peculiar nature of these objects and the contamination of their samples by the evolved populations of the Galactic disk impose demanding observational techniques for the detection of complete numbers of PMS stars in the Milky Way. The Magellanic Clouds, the companion galaxies to our own, demonstrate an exceptional star formation activity. The low extinction and stellar field contamination in star-forming regions of these galaxies imply a more efficient detection of low-mass PMS stars than in the Milky Way, but their distance from us make the application of special detection techniques unfeasible. Nonetheless, imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope yield the discovery of solar and sub-solar PMS stars in the Magellanic Clouds from photometry alone. Unprecedented numbers of such objects are identified as the low-mass stellar content of their star-forming regions, changing completely our picture of young stellar systems outside the Milky Way, and extending the extragalactic stellar IMF below the persisting threshold of a few solar masses. This review presents the recent developments in the investigation of PMS stars in the Magellanic Clouds, with special focus on the limitations by single-epoch photometry that can only be circumvented by the detailed study of the observable behavior of these stars in the color-magnitude diagram. The achieved characterization of the low-mass PMS stars in the Magellanic Clouds allowed thus a more comprehensive understanding of the star formation process in our neighboring galaxies.Comment: Review paper, 26 pages (in LaTeX style for Springer journals), 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Space Science Review