16 research outputs found
Reversal of cardiac damage in patients with symptomatic severe aortic stenosis following transcatheter aortic valve implantation: An echocardiographic study
Background: Severe aortic stenosis (AS) results in cardiac damages, such as left ventricular hypertrophy, left atrial enlargement, pulmonary pressure elevation and in advanced stage, right ventricular damage. Généreux and colleagues proposed a staging classification based on these extra-valvular damages in 2017, with increasing stage representing more cardiac damage. While regression of these cardiac damages is expected following aortic valve replacement, the reversal of cardiac damage based on this staging system has not been described.
Purpose: This study aimed to describe and stage the changes in cardiac structure and function at 6 months and 1 year after transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) in patients with symptomatic severe AS.
Methods: This was a retrospective, single center, longitudinal observational study. Echocardiographic data of patients who underwent TAVI were retrieved and analysed.
Results: From May 2018 to Feb 2021, 31 patients underwent TAVI. 5 patients were excluded due to death <6 months post-procedure (n=2) and incomplete echocardiographic data (n=3). The mean age of the remaining 26 patients was 70.9±9.4 years, 57.7% were male, and 34.6% bicuspid aortic valve. After TAVI, transvalvular aortic mean pressure gradient reduced from 45.2±14.5 mmHg to 8.0±5.4 mmHg (p<0.001), and aortic valve area increased from 0.57±0.21 cm2 to 1.75±0.68 cm2 (p<0.001). At baseline, 6-month and 1-year, the left ventricular mass index (LVMi) were 183.4±60.7g/m2, 150.8±55.3 g/m2 and 126.8±42.1 g/m2 (p<0.001) respectively; left-atrial volume index (LAVI) were 60.4±22.8 ml/m2 , 51.7±23.8ml/m2, and 48.1±23.6ml/m2 (p=0.009) respectively; left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) were 52.3±25.4%, 64.2±29.3%, and 62.4±12.1% (p=0.005) respectively. Based on the proposed cardiac damage staging for AS, at baseline 38% of patients were stage 1, 65.4% stage 2, 7.7% stage 3 and 23.1% stage 4. At 1 year, 8.3% were stage 0, 29.2% stage 1, 58.3% stage 2, and 4.2% stage 4. 12 patients (46%) showed improvement in cardiac damage staging, and the other 14 (54%) remained in the same stage.
Conclusion: In patients with symptomatic severe AS, there were overall significant regression in LVMi and LAVI, and improvement in LVEF at 1 year after TAVI. However, improvement in cardiac damage staging was observed in only 46% of patients
Genomic insights into rapid speciation within the world’s largest tree genus Syzygium
Species radiations, despite immense phenotypic variation, can be difficult to resolve phylogenetically when genetic change poorly matches the rapidity of diversification. Genomic potential furnished by palaeopolyploidy, and relative roles for adaptation, random drift and hybridisation in the apportionment of genetic variation, remain poorly understood factors. Here, we study these aspects in a model radiation, Syzygium, the most species-rich tree genus worldwide. Genomes of 182 distinct species and 58 unidentified taxa are compared against a chromosome-level reference genome of the sea apple, Syzygium grande. We show that while Syzygium shares an ancient genome doubling event with other Myrtales, little evidence exists for recent polyploidy events. Phylogenomics confirms that Syzygium originated in Australia-New Guinea and diversified in multiple migrations, eastward to the Pacific and westward to India and Africa, in bursts of speciation visible as poorly resolved branches on phylogenies. Furthermore, some sublineages demonstrate genomic clines that recapitulate cladogenetic events, suggesting that stepwise geographic speciation, a neutral process, has been important in Syzygium diversification
Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search
Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe
The green home concept - acceptability and development problems
People nowadays are more concerned about the environment since they know the effect
of pollution to the environment and to human’s health. The conventional homes used up
large amounts of power and produced large amount of carbon dioxides annually.
Therefore, conventional homes are one of the sources of global warming. Conventional
homes also polluted the environment. Green Home Concept is an effort made to reduce
the impacts of conventional homes. Green home is a concept whereby a home is created
to use less energy, water and natural resources, to provide good air quality and comfort,
to generate less wastage, and can be considered as a sustainable development that
improve the homeowners’ lifestyle. It is still a new trend in Malaysia housing development
scene. This research focuses on the people’s acceptability and development problems
that occur when developing green home by adopting case study and structural interviews
methods. Questionnaire has also been applied to ascertain the Malaysian homeowners’
acceptability towards this new development concept. This research has also highlighted
the concept and designs of green home in Malaysia. The findings reveal that uncertainty
on people acceptability towards green home and the price are the biggest problems faced
by developers when developing green home
A profile of acute asthma patients presenting to the emergency room
Singapore Medical Journal373252-254SIMJ
Peak expiratory flow rate guided protocol did not improve outcome in emergency room asthma
Singapore Medical Journal3911479-484SIMJ
Peak expiratory flow rate guided protocol did not improve outcome in emergency room asthma
Singapore Medical Journal3911479-484SIMJ
Evaluation of Constructing Care Collaboration - Nurturing empathy and peer-to-peer learning in medical students who participate in voluntary structured service learning programmes for migrant workers
10.1186/s12909-019-1740-6BMC Medical Education19130
IC controller for phase-controlled dimmable compact fluorescent lamps with closed-loop control
An integrated circuit (IC) controller in a standard 2 μm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process implementing the phase controlled dimmable electronic ballast scheme for compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) is presented. It features alternate power cycle sensing and closed loop control for stable change in lamp intensity from full brightness down to 5%. Consumers can easily implement the dimmable CFLs without any modification of the existing power lines
Risk perception and impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) on work and personal lives of healthcare workers in Singapore: What can we learn?
10.1097/01.mlr.0000167181.36730.ccMedical Care437676-682MDLC