Demographic profile of patients who present for emergency treatment at Wits’ Dental School

PKThe faculties of dentistry and medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand will soon amalgamate into a faculty of health sciences. To help plan service provision a demographic profile was determined for 500 patients who attended for emergency treatment in the dental faculty over all four seasons. Mean daily rates were Autumn 7.7, Winter 8.8, Spring 7.8 and Summer 3.3. Most patients (45 per cent) arrived by car, 23 per cent came by bus while 19% walked to the dental school. Over three-quarters (77 per cent) came directly from home and the same proportion had endured symptoms for more than 48 hours. Many (60 per cent) had been treated previously at the dental school of whom 31 per cent had received this within the previous month. No less than 85 per cent had no regular dentist. A third of patients had no symptoms, 26 per cent had chronic pain and in 10 per cent the pain was acute in onset. The most frequent treatments were temporary restorations (39 per cent) and pulp extirpation (34 per cent). An irregular daily work load, together with endurance of symptoms by patients, indicates that an emergency service Monday to Friday during normal working hours is adequate

Ortho-semantic learning of novel words: An event-related potential study of grade 3 children

Introduction: As children become independent readers, they regularly encounter new words whose meanings they must infer from context, and whose spellings must be learned for future recognition. The self-teaching hypothesis proposes orthographic learning skills are critical in the transition to fluent reading, while the lexical quality hypothesis further emphasizes the importance of semantics. Event-related potential (ERP) studies of reading development have focused on effects related to the N170 component—print tuning (letters vs. symbols) and lexical tuning (real words vs. consonant strings)—as well as the N400 reflecting semantic processing, but have not investigated the relationship of these components to word learning during independent reading. Methods: In this study, children in grade 3 independently read short stories that introduced novel words, then completed a lexical decision task from which ERPs were derived. Results: Like real words, newly-learned novel words evoked a lexical tuning effect, indicating rapid establishment of orthographic representations. Both real and novel words elicited significantly smaller N400s than pseudowords, suggesting that semantic representations of the novel words were established. Further, N170 print tuning predicted accuracy on identifying the spellings of the novel words, while the N400 effect for novel words was associated with reading comprehension. Discussion: Exposure to novel words during self-directed reading rapidly establishes neural markers of orthographic and semantic processing. Furthermore, the ability to rapidly filter letter strings from symbols is predictive of orthographic learning, while rapid establishment of semantic representations of novel words is associated with stronger reading comprehension

Double microcatheter technique for detachable coil treatment of large, wide-necked intracranial aneurysms.

We describe a technique used to treat two patients with large, wide-necked aneurysms during the past 2 years. In the initial attempts at embolization, evidence of coil instability within the aneurysm or significant impingement of coil loops on the parent artery was observed. Advancement of a second microcatheter into the aneurysm allowed two coils to be braced across the aneurysmal neck before the detachment of either coil. This technique permitted successful coil treatment in both patients

Computed Blood Flow Dynamics In An Anatomically Realistic Cerebral Aneurysm

this paper we present a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation of physiologically pulsatile flow in an anatomically realistic aneurysm reconstructed from in vivo 3-D imaging of a human subjec