Towards understanding the clinical significance of QT peak prolongation: a novel marker of myocardial ischemia independently demonstrated in two prospective studies

Background: QT peak prolongation identified patients at risk of death or non-fatal MI. We tested the hypothesis that QT peak prolongation might be associated with significant myocardial ischaemia in two separate cohorts to see how widely applicable the concept was. Methods and Results: In the first study, 134 stroke survivors were prospectively recruited and had 12-lead ECGs and Nuclear myocardial perfusion scanning. QT peak was measured in lead I of a 12-lead ECG and heart rate corrected by Bazett’s formula (QTpc). QTpc prolongation to 360ms or more was 92% specific at diagnosing severe myocardial ischaemia. This hypothesis-generating study led us to perform a second prospective study in a different cohort of patients who were referred for dobutamine stress echocardiography. 13 of 102 patients had significant myocardial ischaemia. Significant myocardial ischaemia was associated with QT peak prolongation at rest (mean 354ms, 95% CI 341-367ms, compared with mean 332ms, 95% CI 327-337ms in those without significant ischaemia; p=0.002). QT peak prolongation to 360ms or more was 88% specific at diagnosing significant myocardial ischaemia in the stress echocardiography study. QT peak prolongation to 360ms or more was associated with over 4-fold increase odds ratio of significant myocardial ischaemia. The Mantel- Haenszel Common Odds Ratio Estimate=4.4, 95% CI=1.2-16.0, p=0.023. Conclusion: QT peak (QTpc) prolongation to 360ms or more should make us suspect the presence of significant myocardial ischaemia. Such patients merit further investigations for potentially treatable ischaemic heart disease to reduce their risk of subsequent death or non-fatal MI

Polarization enhancement in d⃗(p⃗\vec{d}(\vec{p},2^2He)n reaction: Nuclear teleportation

I show that an experimental technique used in nuclear physics may be successfully applied to quantum teleportation (QT) of spin states of massive matter. A new non-local physical effect the `quantum-teleportation-effect' is discovered for the nuclear polarization measurement. Enhancement of the neutron polarization is expected in the proposed experiment for QT that discriminates {\it only} one of the Bell states.Comment: 3 pages, accepted for publication in J. Phys.

Optimisation of variables for studying dilepton transverse momentum distributions at hadron colliders

In future measurements of the dilepton ($Z/\gamma^*$) transverse momentum, \Qt, at both the Tevatron and LHC, the achievable bin widths and the ultimate precision of the measurements will be limited by experimental resolution rather than by the available event statistics. In a recent paper the variable \at, which corresponds to the component of \Qt\ that is transverse to the dilepton thrust axis, has been studied in this regard. In the region, \Qt\ $<$ 30 GeV, \at\ has been shown to be less susceptible to experimental resolution and efficiency effects than the \Qt. Extending over all \Qt, we now demonstrate that dividing \at\ (or \Qt) by the measured dilepton invariant mass further improves the resolution. In addition, we propose a new variable, \phistarEta, that is determined exclusively from the measured lepton directions; this is even more precisely determined experimentally than the above variables and is similarly sensitive to the \Qt. The greater precision achievable using such variables will enable more stringent tests of QCD and tighter constraints on Monte Carlo event generator tunes.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Quiet Time for Mechanically Ventilated Patients in The Medical Intensive Care Unit

Objective: Sleep disruption occurs frequently in critically ill patients. The primary aim of this study was to examine the effect of quiet time (QT) on patient sedation frequency, sedation and delirium scores; and to determine if consecutive QTs influenced physiologic measures (heart rate, mean arterial blood pressure and respiratory rate). Method: A prospective study of a quiet time protocol was conducted with 72 adult patients on mechanical ventilation. Setting: A Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) in the Midwest region of the United States. Results: Sedation was given less frequently after QT (p = 0.045). Those who were agitated prior to QT were more likely to be at goal sedation after QT (p \u3c 0.001). Although not statistically significant, the majority of patients who were negative on the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM-ICU) prior to QT remained delirium free after QT. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) for three consecutive QTs showed a significant difference for respiratory rate (p = 0.035). Conclusion: QT may influence sedation administration and promote patient rest. Future studies are required to further understand the influence of QT on mechanically ventilated patients in the intensive care unit

Learning with the Weighted Trace-norm under Arbitrary Sampling Distributions

We provide rigorous guarantees on learning with the weighted trace-norm under arbitrary sampling distributions. We show that the standard weighted trace-norm might fail when the sampling distribution is not a product distribution (i.e. when row and column indexes are not selected independently), present a corrected variant for which we establish strong learning guarantees, and demonstrate that it works better in practice. We provide guarantees when weighting by either the true or empirical sampling distribution, and suggest that even if the true distribution is known (or is uniform), weighting by the empirical distribution may be beneficial

Congenital Short QT Syndrome

Long QT intervals in the ECG have long been associated with sudden cardiac death. The congenital long QT syndrome was first described in individuals with structurally normal hearts in 1957.1 Little was known about the significance of a short QT interval. In 1993, after analyzing 6693 consecutive Holter recordings Algra et al concluded that an increased risk of sudden death was present not only in patients with long QT interval, but also in patients with short QT interval (<400 ms).2 Because this was a retrospective analysis, further evaluation of the data was not possible. It was not until 2000 that a short-QT syndrome (SQTS) was proposed as a new inherited clinical syndrome by Gussak et al.3 The initial report was of two siblings and their mother all of whom displayed persistently short QT interval. The youngest was a 17 year old female presenting with several episodes of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation requiring electrical cardioversion.3 Her QT interval measured 280 msec at a heart rate of 69. Her 21 year old brother displayed a QT interval of 272 msec at a heart rate of 58, whereas the 51 year old mother showed a QT of 260 msec at a heart rate of 74. The authors also noted similar ECG findings in another unrelated 37 year old patient associated with sudden cardiac death

Effects of Neostigmine and Sugammadex on QT Interval and QT Dispersion

Dispersion of QT dispersion(QTD)in 12-lead electrocardiogram is a useful index for assessment of ventricular arrhythmia risk and cardiovascular event. To determine the effects of reversal of nondepolarizing neuromuscular blockade on cardiovascular event, we evaluated the QT interval QTD after reversal of the neuromuscular blockade by neostigmine or sugammadex.After obtaining the approval of the ethics committee of Dokkyo Medical University Hospital, 40 patients with ASA physical status I or II were allocated to following two groups. Patients in the groups N(n=16)and S(n=15)received combination of neostigmine(40?μg/kg)and atropine(20?μg/kg)or sugammadex(2?mg/kg)as a reversal of neuromuscular blockade after the operation under 1% sevoflurane anesthesia, respectively. The RR interval, QT interval(QT), corrected QT interval(QTc), QT dispersion and corrected QT dispersion(QTcD)were consecutively recorded using computerized measurement before and after administration of reversal agents in both groups.RR interval in the group N significantly decreased 1-4?min after reversal of the neuromuscular blockade, but not in the group S. However, in the groups N and S, QT interval, QTc interval, QTD and QTcD were not changed after reversal of the neuromuscular blockade. Moreover, there was no significant difference between both groups in QT interval, QTc interval, QTD and QTcD during the study.Our results suggest that neither neostigmine nor sugammadex may increase the risk of ventricular arrhythmia and cardiovascular events in reversal of the neuromuscular blockade under sevoflurane anesthesia