A comparative study of combined spinal epidural anaesthesia and general anaesthesia in patients undergoing percutaneous nephrolithotomy

Background: Our primary aim was to study the efficacy, safety, hemodynamic stability, postoperative pain relief, and complication with combined spinal epidural anaesthesia (CSE) and to compare it with general anaesthesia (GA) for percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL).  Methods: The present study was a prospective, randomized, open, controlled trial to compare the effects of CSE and GA in patients undergoing PCNL. Study was carried out in 100 adult patients, who were randomly divided into two groups of 50 each, Group GA and Group CSE. Post-operative pain relief and amount rescue analgesia required were noted. Postoperatively samples were collected for haemoglobin and arterial blood gases. Incidence of complications were noted and compared among both the groups.Results: Mean arterial pressure in CSE group was less compared to GA group during the procedure. 30 % patients in group GA required first rescue analgesia within first hour of completion of surgery whereas no patient in group CSE required analgesia within first hour indicating better pain relief in CSE group. Mean haemoglobin and the fall in haemoglobin between the groups were comparable. 48.0% of the cases among GA group and 14.0% of the cases among CSE group had postoperative nausea and vomiting. Mean pH in GA group was 7.33±0.05 and in CSE group was 7.36±0.04. There was one case of hydrothorax post operatively.Conclusions: We conclude that CSE is a safe alternative to GA for PCNL with better pain relief, less PONV. Hypotension due to sympathetic blockade is always a possibility

The Stability of LSF-YSZ Electrodes Prepared by Infiltration

Composite electrodes were prepared by adding 40 wt % La0.8Sr0.2FeO3 (LSF) into porous yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) and their performance was studied as a function of time and calcination temperature. X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns of the LSF-YSZ composites indicated an expanded lattice parameter after calcination above 1523 K, suggesting that Zr reacted with the LSF to form a Zr-doped perovskite; but XRD provided no evidence for reaction between LSF and YSZ after calcination at 1373 K or after operation for 1000 h at 973 K and 700 h at 1073 K. A composite of 40 wt % La0.8Sr0.2Fe0.9Zr0.1O3 in YSZ showed reasonable performance at 973 K, with an area-specific resistance (ASR) of 0.22 Ω cm2. Based on symmetric-cell measurements, electrodes calcined at 1123 K showed an initial ASR of 0.13 Ω cm2 at 973 K but this increased linearly with time to 0.55 Ω cm2 after 2500 h at 973 K. However, the ASR depended strongly on current density, decreasing dramatically under both anodic and cathodic polarization. Electrodes calcined at 1373 K showed an ASR of 2.5 Ω cm2 at 973 K but this value also decreased dramatically under polarization. Scanning electron microcopy images demonstrate that aging at 973 K and calcination at 1373 K cause significant sintering of the LSF. It is therefore suggested that deactivation is caused by morphological changes, rather than solid-state reactions, with a dense layer of LSF forming over the YSZ substrate

Total body irradiation in a case of thalassemia major with source to axis distance based planning: A case report

Background: The use of total body radiation (TBI) before hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) would increase the engraftment without transplant-related morbidity or mortality among Thalassemia major (TM) cases. Case presentation: A 2-year-old female child, diagnosed with TM was scheduled for haploidentical allogenic transplant-based protocol, and after that, based on protocol she was scheduled to undergo a single session of TBI as a conditioning regimen before haploidentical allogenic hematopoietic stem cell tranplant. A total dose of 4 Gy was administered.. The incidence of graft failure was reduced as TBI was used before allogeneic stem cell transplantation. TBI provided a uniform dose of radiation to the entire body, penetrating areas such as the central nervous system (CNS) and testes. Conclusion: Total Body Irradiation with the SAD technique is the most effective way of treatment. As it is comfortable for the patient to undergo, easily reproducible, and it helps to achieve a uniform dose distribution

Total body irradiation in a case of thalassemia major with source to axis distance based planning: A case report

Background: The use of total body radiation (TBI) before hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) would increase the engraftment without transplant-related morbidity or mortality among Thalassemia major (TM) cases. Case presentation: A 2-year-old female child, diagnosed with TM was scheduled for haploidentical allogenic transplant-based protocol, and after that, based on protocol she was scheduled to undergo a single session of TBI as a conditioning regimen before haploidentical allogenic hematopoietic stem cell tranplant. A total dose of 4 Gy was administered.. The incidence of graft failure was reduced as TBI was used before allogeneic stem cell transplantation. TBI provided a uniform dose of radiation to the entire body, penetrating areas such as the central nervous system (CNS) and testes. Conclusion: Total Body Irradiation with the SAD technique is the most effective way of treatment. As it is comfortable for the patient to undergo, easily reproducible, and it helps to achieve a uniform dose distribution

Domain Switching as a Toughening Mechanism in Tetragonal Zirconia

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65640/1/j.1151-2916.1988.tb05943.x.pd

Seminar Users in the Arabic Twitter Sphere

We introduce the notion of "seminar users", who are social media users engaged in propaganda in support of a political entity. We develop a framework that can identify such users with 84.4% precision and 76.1% recall. While our dataset is from the Arab region, omitting language-specific features has only a minor impact on classification performance, and thus, our approach could work for detecting seminar users in other parts of the world and in other languages. We further explored a controversial political topic to observe the prevalence and potential potency of such users. In our case study, we found that 25% of the users engaged in the topic are in fact seminar users and their tweets make nearly a third of the on-topic tweets. Moreover, they are often successful in affecting mainstream discourse with coordinated hashtag campaigns.Comment: to appear in SocInfo 201

Stencil Nano Lithography Based on a Nanoscale Polymer Shadow Mask: Towards Organic Nanoelectronics

A stencil lithography technique has been developed to fabricate organic-material-based electronic devices with sub-micron resolution. Suspended polymethylmethacrylate ( PMMA) membranes were used as shadow masks for defining organic channels and top electrodes. Arrays of pentacene field effect transistors (FETs) with various channel lengths from 50 mu m down to 500 nm were successfully produced from the same batch using this technique. Electrical transport measurements showed that the electrical contacts of all devices were stable and the normalized contact resistances were much lower than previously studied organic FETs. Scaling effects, originating from the bulk space charge current, were investigated by analyzing the channel-length-dependent mobility and hysteresis behaviors. This novel lithography method provides a reliable means for studying the fundamental transport properties of organic materials at the nanoscale as well as enabling potential applications requiring the fabrication of integrated organic nanoelectronic devices.open1155sciescopu