5,585 research outputs found
Economic evaluation of ASCOT-BPLA: Antihypertensive treatment with an amlodipine-based regimen is cost-effective compared to an atenolol-based regimen
Copyright © 2010 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Cardiovascular Society. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material must be obtained from the Publisher.Objective: To compare the cost effectiveness of an amlodipine-based strategy and an atenolol-based strategy in the treatment of hypertension in the UK and Sweden.
Design: A prospective, randomised trial complemented with a Markov model to assess long-term costs and health effects.
Setting: Primary care.
Patients: Patients with moderate hypertension and three or more additional risk factors.
Interventions: Amlodipine 5–10 mg with perindopril 4–8 mg added as needed or atenolol 50–100 mg with bendroflumethiazide 1.25–2.5 mg and potassium added as needed
Main outcome measures: Cost per cardiovascular event and procedure avoided, and cost per quality-adjusted life-year gained.
Results: In the UK, the cost to avoid one cardiovascular event or procedure would be €18 965, and the cost to gain one quality-adjusted life-year would be €21 875. The corresponding figures for Sweden were €13 210 and €16 856.
Conclusions: Compared with the thresholds applied by NICE and in the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare’s Guidelines for Cardiac Care, an amlodipine-based regimen is cost effective for the treatment of hypertension compared with an atenolol-based regimen in the population studied.The study was supported by the principal funding source, Pfizer, New York, USA
Relativistic calculations of pionic and kaonic atoms hyperfine structure
We present the relativistic calculation of the hyperfine structure in pionic
and kaonic atoms. A perturbation method has been applied to the Klein-Gordon
equation to take into account the relativistic corrections. The perturbation
operator has been obtained \textit{via} a multipole expansion of the nuclear
electromagnetic potential. The hyperfine structure of pionic and kaonic atoms
provide an additional term in the quantum electrodynamics calculation of the
energy transition of these systems. Such a correction is required for a recent
measurement of the pion mass
Effective interactions and large-scale diagonalization for quantum dots
The widely used large-scale diagonalization method using harmonic oscillator
basis functions (an instance of the Rayleigh-Ritz method, also called a
spectral method, configuration-interaction method, or ``exact diagonalization''
method) is systematically analyzed using results for the convergence of Hermite
function series. We apply this theory to a Hamiltonian for a one-dimensional
model of a quantum dot. The method is shown to converge slowly, and the
non-smooth character of the interaction potential is identified as the main
problem with the chosen basis, while on the other hand its important advantages
are pointed out. An effective interaction obtained by a similarity
transformation is proposed for improving the convergence of the diagonalization
scheme, and numerical experiments are performed to demonstrate the improvement.
Generalizations to more particles and dimensions are discussed.Comment: 7 figures, submitted to Physical Review B Single reference error
fixe
Evidence for the absence of regularization corrections to the partial-wave renormalization procedure in one-loop self energy calculations in external fields
The equivalence of the covariant renormalization and the partial-wave
renormaliz ation (PWR) approach is proven explicitly for the one-loop
self-energy correction (SE) of a bound electron state in the presence of
external perturbation potentials. No spurious correctio n terms to the
noncovariant PWR scheme are generated for Coulomb-type screening potentia ls
and for external magnetic fields. It is shown that in numerical calculations of
the SE with Coulombic perturbation potential spurious terms result from an
improper treatment of the unphysical high-energy contribution. A method for
performing the PWR utilizing the relativistic B-spline approach for the
construction of the Dirac spectrum in external magnetic fields is proposed.
This method is applied for calculating QED corrections to the bound-electron
-factor in H-like ions. Within the level of accuracy of about 0.1% no
spurious terms are generated in numerical calculations of the SE in magnetic
fields.Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX, 1 figur
Many-body-QED perturbation theory: Connection to the Bethe-Salpeter equation
The connection between many-body theory (MBPT)--in perturbative and
non-perturbative form--and quantum-electrodynamics (QED) is reviewed for
systems of two fermions in an external field. The treatment is mainly based
upon the recently developed covariant-evolution-operator method for QED
calculations [Lindgren et al. Phys. Rep. 389, 161 (2004)], which has a
structure quite akin to that of many-body perturbation theory. At the same time
this procedure is closely connected to the S-matrix and the Green's-function
formalisms and can therefore serve as a bridge between various approaches. It
is demonstrated that the MBPT-QED scheme, when carried to all orders, leads to
a Schroedinger-like equation, equivalent to the Bethe-Salpeter (BS) equation. A
Bloch equation in commutator form that can be used for an "extended" or
quasi-degenerate model space is derived. It has the same relation to the BS
equation as has the standard Bloch equation to the ordinary Schroedinger
equation and can be used to generate a perturbation expansion compatible with
the BS equation also for a quasi-degenerate model space.Comment: Submitted to Canadian J of Physic
Arrays of Josephson junctions in an environment with vanishing impedance
The Hamiltonian operator for an unbiased array of Josephson junctions with
gate voltages is constructed when only Cooper pair tunnelling and charging
effects are taken into account. The supercurrent through the system and the
pumped current induced by changing the gate voltages periodically are discussed
with an emphasis on the inaccuracies in the Cooper pair pumping.
Renormalisation of the Hamiltonian operator is used in order to reliably
parametrise the effects due to inhomogeneity in the array and non-ideal gating
sequences. The relatively simple model yields an explicit, testable prediction
based on three experimentally motivated and determinable parameters.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, uses RevTeX and epsfig, Revised version, Better
readability and some new result
PCV29 COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF REDUCTION IN CARDIOVASCULAR OUTCOMES WITH ATORVASTATIN IN PATIENTS WITH NORMAL TO MILDLY ELEVATED CHOLESTEROL LEVELS.TREATED FOR HYPERTENSION: THE ASCOT-LLA STUDY
Theoretical determination of lifetimes of metastable states in Sc III and Y III
Lifetimes of the first two metastable states in Sc^{2+} and Y^{2+} are
determined using the relativistic coupled-cluster theory. There is a
considerable interest in studying the electron correlation effects in these
ions as though their electronic configurations are similar to the neutral
alkali atoms, their structures are very different from the latter. We have made
a comparative study of the correlation trends between the above doubly ionized
systems with their corresponding neutral and singly ionized iso-electronic
systems. The lifetimes of the excited states of these ions are very important
in the field of astrophysics, especially for the study of post-main sequence
evolution of the cool giant stars.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure and 5 table
Structural Information in Two-Dimensional Patterns: Entropy Convergence and Excess Entropy
We develop information-theoretic measures of spatial structure and pattern in
more than one dimension. As is well known, the entropy density of a
two-dimensional configuration can be efficiently and accurately estimated via a
converging sequence of conditional entropies. We show that the manner in which
these conditional entropies converge to their asymptotic value serves as a
measure of global correlation and structure for spatial systems in any
dimension. We compare and contrast entropy-convergence with mutual-information
and structure-factor techniques for quantifying and detecting spatial
structure.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures,
http://www.santafe.edu/projects/CompMech/papers/2dnnn.htm
The second-order electron self-energy in hydrogen-like ions
A calculation of the simplest part of the second-order electron self-energy
(loop after loop irreducible contribution) for hydrogen-like ions with nuclear
charge numbers is presented. This serves as a test for the
more complicated second-order self-energy parts (loop inside loop and crossed
loop contributions) for heavy one-electron ions. Our results are in strong
disagreement with recent calculations of Mallampalli and Sapirstein for low
values but are compatible with the two known terms of the analytical
-expansion.Comment: 13 LaTex pages, 2 figure
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