Changes in nasal airflow and heat transfer correlate with symptom improvement after surgery for nasal obstruction

Surgeries to correct nasal airway obstruction (NAO) often have less than desirable outcomes, partly due to the absence of an objective tool to select the most appropriate surgical approach for each patient. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models can be used to investigate nasal airflow, but variables need to be identified that can detect surgical changes and correlate with patient symptoms. CFD models were constructed from pre- and post-surgery computed tomography scans for 10 NAO patients showing no evidence of nasal cycling. Steady-state inspiratory airflow, nasal resistance, wall shear stress, and heat flux were computed for the main nasal cavity from nostrils to posterior nasal septum both bilaterally and unilaterally. Paired t-tests indicated that all CFD variables were significantly changed by surgery when calculated on the most obstructed side, and that airflow, nasal resistance, and heat flux were significantly changed bilaterally as well. Moderate linear correlations with patient-reported symptoms were found for airflow, heat flux, unilateral allocation of airflow, and unilateral nasal resistance as a fraction of bilateral nasal resistance when calculated on the most obstructed nasal side, suggesting that these variables may be useful for evaluating the efficacy of nasal surgery objectively. Similarity in the strengths of these correlations suggests that patient-reported symptoms may represent a constellation of effects and that these variables should be tracked concurrently during future virtual surgery planning

Predicting Postsurgery Nasal Physiology with Computational Modeling: Current Challenges and Limitations

High failure rates for surgical treatment of nasal airway obstruction (NAO) indicate that better diagnostic tools are needed to improve surgical planning. This study evaluates whether computer models based on a surgeon’s edits of pre-surgery scans can accurately predict results from computer models based on post-operative scans of the same patient using computational fluid dynamics

BMI and Risk of Serious Upper Body Injury Following Motor Vehicle Crashes: Concordance of Real-World and Computer-Simulated Observations

Shankuan Zhu and colleagues use computer crash simulations, as well as real-world data, to evaluate whether driver obesity is associated with greater risk of body injury in motor vehicle crashes

Apoptosis of CD4+CD25high T Cells in Type 1 Diabetes May Be Partially Mediated by IL-2 Deprivation

from T1D subjects. in T1D may be caught up in a relatively deficient cytokine milieu. function in subjects predisposed to T1D

Computations via auxiliary random functions for survival models

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/35825/2/b2034670.0001.001.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/35825/1/b2034670.0001.001.tx

Bayesian nonparametric and covariate analysis of failure time data

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/35824/2/b1892988.0001.001.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/35824/1/b1892988.0001.001.tx