Renal Function after Nephrectomy Influences the Risk of Cardiovascular Events

We retrospectively analyzed the factors related to postoperative cardiovascular (CV) events in patients undergoing partial nephrectomy (PN) or radical nephrectomy (RN) for clinical T1 renal cell carcinoma (RCC). We identified 570 patients who underwent PN or RN for T1 renal cell carcinoma between January 1998 and December 2009 at our institution and related hospitals. We determined the cumulative incidence rate of CV events and overall survival (OS) using Kaplan-Meier survival curves with a log-rank test, and we evaluated the risk for an increase in CV events and OS using Cox proportional hazard regression. Of the 570 patients, 171 underwent PN and 399 underwent RN. The type of surgery was not significantly related with CV events. The only factor that significantly increased the risk of CV events in both the univariate (HR 2.67, p=0.006) and multivariate analyses (HR 2.14, p=0.044) was a postoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) <45 ml/min/1.73 m2. Postoperative eGFR was also a significant risk factor for OS in the univariate analysis (HR 2.38, p=0.0104), but not in the multivariate model. Postoperative renal function was a significant independent predictor of the incidence of subsequent CV events

Effectiveness of an Adaptive Testing Procedure for Measuring Verbal Ability

The purpose of this research is two-fold. Firstly, from a practical point of view, the development of a new computer program for an adaptive testing procedure was necessitated in order to measure the verbal ability more efficiently than the other existing procedures. Secondly, an experiment was designed in order to compare the efficiency of the adaptive testing procedure with that of the conventional testing procedure, analyze the effects of the feedback, investigate the relationship between the verbal ability and the response time, and evaluate the stability of the repeated measurements. With regard to the first purpose, a satisfactory computer program was created. This program automatically controlls the selection of test items during the process of administering the test so that the items administered to each subject should be appropriate in their difficulties. Furthermore, with regard to the second purpose, it was conculded that the results showed the superiority of the adaptive testing procedure over the conventional one in many respects