Indication for mild therapeutic hypothermia based on an initial Glasgow Coma Scale motor score

Although neurological evaluation using the Glasgow Coma Scale motor score is mandatory for post-cardiac arrest patients, further study is required to determine if this score can be used as an indicator for mild therapeutic hypothermia. Although the current study conducted by Natsukawa et al. presents interesting data, there are some critical issues regarding study design, selection bias, and interpretation of study results that should be pointed out

Clinical application of the contrast media containing soft drinks for the X-ray examination of the stomach

胃X線検査の被験者を増やし、検査を円滑に行う上で造影剤である硫酸バリウム懸濁液の飲みにくさが障害の一つとなっている。これを改善する目的で、懸濁液に市販の粉末清涼飲料を混入したところ、64.2％の人が通常のものよりも飲みやすいと答えた。臨床上も造影剤の付着が悪くなったり、胃の蠕動を促進する等の問題は生じず、有用であると考えられた。Barium sulfate suspensions are disliked by many people. This is one of the obstacles to increase persons who consult doctors and to have medical examinations smoothly. We mixed soft drinks into the suspensions to improve this problem. As a result, they were popular among 64.2% people, there were not any clinical troubles that the suspensions did not stick to the mucous membrane of the stomach well, the peristalsis of the sotmach were promoted, and so on. These results suggest that the contrast media containing soft drinks is useful for the X-ray examinations of the stomach

A visual analytics system to support the formation of a hypothesis from calcium wave data

In most species, calcium waves in the oocyte are considered common phenomena in the activation of eggs. However, the mechanism of calcium waves has not yet been clarified. By collaborating with biologists studying Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), which is widely used as a model organism, we observed that the following requirements must be satisfied to form a useful hypothesis based on calcium waves captured using high-speed in vivo imaging: (1) the ability to obtain an overview of how the calcium waves are propagated and (2) the ability to understand the propagation of waves in a narrow region. However, conventional visualization methods cannot satisfy these requirements simultaneously. Therefore, we propose a visual analytics system that allows users to understand and explore calcium wave images using cross-correlation analysis of the time-series data of the Ca²⁺ fluorescence intensity at each point. The interface of this system comprises an overview visualization, a detail visualization, and user interactions to satisfy these requirements and realize exploratory visualization. Some views present an overview visualization that displays the clustering results of a directed graph calculated using cross-correlation analysis. These views enable the users to understand the overview of wave propagation, thereby helping users find a region of interest. The detail visualization shows the relationship between the region of interest and other areas. Furthermore, users can use the proposed system with overview-detail and brush-link exploration to assign meaning to the region of interest and construct a hypothesis for its role. In this paper, we demonstrate how the proposed visual analytics approach works and how new hypotheses can be formed using the analysis of C. elegans calcium waves