487 research outputs found
Factors Associated With Prolonged Length of Stay for Elective Hepatobiliary and Neurosurgery Patients: A Retrospective Medical Record Review
Background: Patients with prolonged length of hospital stay (LOS) not only increase their risks of nosocomial infections but also deny other patients access to inpatient care. Hepatobiliary (HPB) malignancies have some of highest incidences in East and Southeast Asia and the management of patients undergoing HPB surgeries have yet to be standardized. With improved neurosurgery techniques for intracranial aneurysms and tumors, neurosurgeries (NS) can be expected to increase. Elective surgeries account for far more operations than emergencies surgeries. Thus, with potentially increased numbers of elective HPB and NS, this study seeks to explore perioperative factors associated with prolonged LOS for these patients to improve safety and quality of practice.
Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional medical record review study from January 2014 to January 2015 was conducted at a 1250-bed tertiary academic hospital in Singapore. All elective HPB and NS patients over 18 years old were included in the study except day and emergency surgeries, resulting in 150 and 166 patients respectively. Prolonged LOS was defined as above median LOS based on the complexity of the surgical procedure. The predictor variables were preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative factors. Student\u27s t-test and stepwise logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine which factors were associated with prolonged LOS.
Results: Factors associated with prolonged LOS for the HPB sample were age and admission after 5 pm but for the NS sample, they were functional status, referral to occupational therapy, and the number of hospital-acquired infections.
Conclusion: Our findings indicate that preoperative factors had the greatest association with prolonged LOS for HPB and NS elective surgeries even after adjusting for surgical complexity, suggesting that patient safety and quality of care may be improved with better pre-surgery patient preparation and admission practices
The fermi arc and fermi pocket in cuprates in a short-range diagonal stripe phase
In this paper we studied the fermi arc and the fermi pocket in cuprates in a
short-range diagonal stripe phase with wave vectors , which
reproduce with a high accuracy the positions and sizes of the fermi arc and
fermi pocket and the superstructure in cuprates observed by Meng et
al\cite{Meng}. The low-energy spectral function indicates that the fermi pocket
results from the main band and the shadow band at the fermi energy. Above the
fermi energy the shadow band gradually departs away from the main band, leaving
a fermi arc. Thus we conclude that the fermi arc and fermi pocket can be fully
attributed to the stripe phase but has nothing to do with pairing.
Incorporating a d-wave pairing potential in the stripe phase the spectral
weight in the antinodal region is removed, leaving a clean fermi pocket in the
nodal region.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure
ANK2 autism mutation targeting giant ankyrin-B promotes axon branching and ectopic connectivity
Giant ankyrin-B (ankB) is a neurospecific alternatively spliced variant of ANK2, a high-confidence autism spectrum disorder (ASD) gene. We report that a mouse model for human ASD mutation of giant ankB exhibits increased axonal branching in cultured neurons with ectopic CNS axon connectivity, as well as with a transient increase in excitatory synapses during postnatal development. We elucidate a mechanism normally limiting axon branching, whereby giant ankB localizes to periodic axonal plasma membrane domains through L1 cell-adhesion molecule protein, where it couples microtubules to the plasma membrane and prevents microtubule entry into nascent axon branches. Giant ankB mutation or deficiency results in a dominantly inherited impairment in selected communicative and social behaviors combined with superior executive function. Thus, gain of axon branching due to giant ankB-deficiency/mutation is a candidate cellular mechanism to explain aberrant structural connectivity and penetrant behavioral consequences in mice as well as humans bearing ASD-related ANK2 mutations
Anisotropic flow of charged hadrons, pions and (anti-)protons measured at high transverse momentum in Pb-Pb collisions at TeV
The elliptic, , triangular, , and quadrangular, , azimuthal
anisotropic flow coefficients are measured for unidentified charged particles,
pions and (anti-)protons in Pb-Pb collisions at TeV
with the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Results obtained with the
event plane and four-particle cumulant methods are reported for the
pseudo-rapidity range at different collision centralities and as a
function of transverse momentum, , out to GeV/.
The observed non-zero elliptic and triangular flow depends only weakly on
transverse momentum for GeV/. The small dependence
of the difference between elliptic flow results obtained from the event plane
and four-particle cumulant methods suggests a common origin of flow
fluctuations up to GeV/. The magnitude of the (anti-)proton
elliptic and triangular flow is larger than that of pions out to at least
GeV/ indicating that the particle type dependence persists out
to high .Comment: 16 pages, 5 captioned figures, authors from page 11, published
version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/186
Centrality dependence of charged particle production at large transverse momentum in Pb-Pb collisions at TeV
The inclusive transverse momentum () distributions of primary
charged particles are measured in the pseudo-rapidity range as a
function of event centrality in Pb-Pb collisions at
TeV with ALICE at the LHC. The data are presented in the range
GeV/ for nine centrality intervals from 70-80% to 0-5%.
The Pb-Pb spectra are presented in terms of the nuclear modification factor
using a pp reference spectrum measured at the same collision
energy. We observe that the suppression of high- particles strongly
depends on event centrality. In central collisions (0-5%) the yield is most
suppressed with at -7 GeV/. Above
GeV/, there is a significant rise in the nuclear modification
factor, which reaches for GeV/. In
peripheral collisions (70-80%), the suppression is weaker with almost independently of . The measured nuclear
modification factors are compared to other measurements and model calculations.Comment: 17 pages, 4 captioned figures, 2 tables, authors from page 12,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/284
Measurement of charm production at central rapidity in proton-proton collisions at TeV
The -differential production cross sections of the prompt (B
feed-down subtracted) charmed mesons D, D, and D in the rapidity
range , and for transverse momentum GeV/, were
measured in proton-proton collisions at TeV with the ALICE
detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The analysis exploited the hadronic
decays DK, DK, DD, and their charge conjugates, and was performed on a
nb event sample collected in 2011 with a
minimum-bias trigger. The total charm production cross section at TeV and at 7 TeV was evaluated by extrapolating to the full phase space
the -differential production cross sections at TeV
and our previous measurements at TeV. The results were compared
to existing measurements and to perturbative-QCD calculations. The fraction of
cdbar D mesons produced in a vector state was also determined.Comment: 20 pages, 5 captioned figures, 4 tables, authors from page 15,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/307
Production of Mesons and Baryons at High Rapidity and High Pt in Proton-Proton Collisions at = 200 GeV
We present particle spectra for charged hadrons and from pp collisions at =200\bar{p}/p$ ratios associated with baryon transport
Particle-yield modification in jet-like azimuthal di-hadron correlations in Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV
The yield of charged particles associated with high- trigger
particles ( GeV/) is measured with the ALICE detector in
Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV relative to proton-proton
collisions at the same energy. The conditional per-trigger yields are extracted
from the narrow jet-like correlation peaks in azimuthal di-hadron correlations.
In the 5% most central collisions, we observe that the yield of associated
charged particles with transverse momenta GeV/ on the
away-side drops to about 60% of that observed in pp collisions, while on the
near-side a moderate enhancement of 20-30% is found.Comment: 15 pages, 2 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 10,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/350
Nuclear stopping and rapidity loss in Au+Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}}=62.4 GeV
Transverse momentum spectra of protons and anti-protons measured in the
rapidity range 0<y<3.1 from 0-10% central Au+Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}}=62.4
GeV are presented. The rapidity densities, dN/dy, of protons, anti-protons and
net-protons N()p-N(pbar) have been deduced from the spectra over a rapidity
range wide enough to observe the expected maximum net-baryon density. From
mid-rapidity to y=1 the net-proton yield is roughly constant (dN/dy ~ 10),but
rises to dN/dy ~25 at 2.3<y<3.1. The mean rapidity loss is 2.01 +-0.16 units
from beam rapidity. The measured rapidity distributions are compared to model
predictions. Systematics of net-baryon distributions and rapidity loss vs.
collision energy are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Submitted Phys.Lett.
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