To Tell Trauma: Billy’s Time Travel in Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five depicts a story where its male protagonist Billy has come unstuck in time and therefore travels back and forth between the past, the present, and the future and even been hijacked to an alien planet called Tralfamadore. However, under the disguise of such a sci-fi fantasy, the author Vonnegut deliberately leaves readers many hints that Billy’s time-travel experience is less a scientific fantasy than a traumatic narrative. Therefore, this article aims to explore how Vonnegut manages to make use of this time-travel story to convey the messages about Billy’s post-traumatic stress disorder and the two major causes of his traumatic experiences, and then to figure out why this master take painstaking efforts to choose this scientific time-travel story instead of conveying the traumatic elements much more directly. After the detailed analysis, a more sympathetic understanding of how badly the crucial war as well as the alienation among people can impact one’s psychological condition can be reached.

Percutaneous renal artery denervation in patients with chronic systolic heart failure: A randomized controlled trial

Background: Renal denervation (RDN) is as an effective treatment for heart failure (HF), but its effects on cardiac function of patients with HF are not well documented. Here, the aim was to investigate RDN’s effect on patients with chronic systolic HF, by conducting a single-center, prospective, randomized, and controlled study. Methods: Sixty patients with chronic systolic HF were randomly assigned to the RDN or control groups, receiving percutaneous catheter-based RDN with radiofrequency ablation and drug treatment, respectively. All patients performed a 6-minute walk test, echocardiography, blood pressure measurement, and biochemical test, at both baseline and in a 6-month follow up. Results: Over 6-month follow up, patients in RDN group showed a decrease in N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (440.1 ± 226.5 pg/mL vs. 790.8 ± 287.0 pg/mL, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.14), an increase in left ventricular ejection fraction (39.1 ± 7.3% vs. 35.6 ± 3.3%, p = 0.017, Cohen’s d = 0.61), improved New York Heart Association class assessment (p = 0.01, Cohen’s d = 0.66), and decreased blood pressures (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.91), without reporting hypotension and syncope amaurosis. No significant between-group difference was observed for glomerular filtration rate and heart rate. Conclusions: Renal denervation which effectively and safely improves patient’s cardiac function as well as exercise tolerance, could be considered as an effective treatment for chronic systolic HF