Neurogenic bladder in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury: Treatment and follow-up

Study design:Multi-center, cross-sectional study.Objectives:Our aim was to evaluate the treatment methods and follow-up of neurogenic bladder in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury retrospectively using a questionnaire.Setting: Turkey.Methods:Three hundred and thirty-seven patients who had spinal cord injury for at least 2 years were enrolled from six centers in the neurogenic bladder study group. They were asked to fill-out a questionnaire about treatments they received and techniques they used for bladder management.Results:The study included 246 male and 91 female patients with a mean age of 42±14 years. Intermittent catheterization ( IC) was performed in 77.9% of the patients, 3.8% had indwelling catheters, 13.8% had normal spontaneous micturition, 2.6% performed voiding maneuvers, 1.3% used diapers and 0.6% used condom catheters. No gender difference was found regarding the techniques used in bladder rehabilitation ( P>0.05). Overall, 63.2% of patients used anticholinergic drugs; anticholinergic drug use was similar between genders ( P>0.05). The most common anticholinergic drug used was oxybutynin ( 40.3%), followed by trospium ( 32.6%), tolterodine ( 19.3%) darifenacin ( 3.3%), propiverine ( 3.3%) and solifenacin ( 1.1%). The specialties of the physicians who first prescribed the anticholinergic drug were physiatrists ( 76.2%), urologists ( 22.1%) and neurologists ( 1.7%). Only four patients had previously received injections of botulinum-toxin-A into the detrusor muscle and three of them stated that their symptoms showed improvement. Most of the patients ( 77%) had regular follow-up examinations, including urine cultures, urinary system ultrasound and urodynamic tests, when necessary; the reasons for not having regular control visits were living distant from hospital ( 15.3%) and monetary problems ( 7.7%). Of the patients, 42.7% did not experience urinary tract infections ( UTI), 36.4% had bacteriuria but no UTI episodes with fever, 15.9% had 1-2 clinical UTI episodes per year and 5% had ≥3 clinical UTIs. The clinical characteristics of patients with and without UTI ( at least one symptomatic UTI during 1 year) were similar ( P>0.05). The frequency of symptomatic UTI was similar in patients using different bladder management techniques ( P>0.05).Conclusion:The most frequently used technique for bladder rehabilitation in patients with SCI was IC ( 77.9%). In all, 63.2% of patients used anticholinergic drugs, oxybutynin being the most commonly used drug. Also, 77% of patients had regular control visits for neurogenic bladder; 42.7% did not experience any UTIs. © 2014 International Spinal Cord Society

An experimental investigation of laser scabbling of concrete

Laser scabbling of concrete is the process of removal of surface material using a high power laser beam. The main aim of this investigation was to establish an experimental procedure for assessing the effects of various parameters that may be critical for the effectiveness of the process, such as material composition and initial moisture content. The study shows that the key characteristics of the process can be detected by monitoring surface temperature variations. This experimental procedure is used to provide data on the effects of each parameter to explain the mechanisms that drive the process. The results suggest that scabbling is mainly driven by pore pressures in the cement paste, but strongly affected by other factors. Reducing permeability by adding PFA to the cement paste resulted in significant increase in volume removal; but reducing moisture content by air-drying of the material did not result in the expected reduction in volume removal

Seyrek matris-vektör çarpımının koşut zamanda özelleştirilmesi ve otomatik ayarlanması

Thesis (M.A.)--Özyeğin University, Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering, Department of Computer Science, December 2015.Runtime specialization is used for optimizing programs based on partial information available only at runtime. In this thesis, we present a purpose-built compiler to quickly specialize Sparse Matrix-Vector Multiplication code for a particular matrix at runtime. There are several specialization methods and the best one depends both on the matrix and the platform. To avoid having to generate all the specialization variations, we use an autotuning approach to predict the best specializer for a given matrix. To this end, we define a set of matrix features for autotuning. Several of these features are unique to our work. We evaluate our system on two machines and show that our approach predicts either the best or the second best method in 91-96\% of the matrices. Predictions achieve average speedups that are very close to the speedups achievable when only the best methods are used. By using an efficient code generator and a carefully designed set of matrix features, we show the total runtime costs of autotuning and specialization can be amortized to bring performance benefits for many real-world cases.Koşut zamanda özelleştirme, sadece koşut zamanda belli olan kısmi veriye dayanarak programları optimize etmek için kullanılan bir yöntemdir. Bu tezde, seyrek matris-vektör çarpımı¸ için hızlı bir şekilde koşut zamanda özelleştirme yapma amacına yönelik bir derleyici sunuyoruz. Seyrek matris-vektör çarpımı için ceşitli özelleştirme metodları vardır; en iyi yöntemin hangisi olduğu hem matris hem de donanım mimarisine bağlıdır. Özelleştirme yöntemlerinin tümünü kullanarak kod üretmekten kaçınmak için, otomatik ayarlama yaklaşımı kullanarak, girdi olarak verilen matris için en iyi özelleştiriciyi tahmin eden bir yöntem oluşturduk. Otomatik ayarlama yapabilmek için bir matris özellikleri kümesi tanımladık. Bu özelliklerin pek çoğu bizim çalışmamıza özgüdür. Sistemimizi iki ayrı makina uzerinde test ettik ve yaklaşımımız en iyi veya en iyi ikinci özelleştirme metodunu %91-96 oranında başarıyla tahmin edebilmektedir. Otomatik ayarlamayla yapılan tahminlerimiz, yalnızca en iyi metodlar kullanıldığında elde edilen hızlanmaya çok¸ yakın hızlanmalar elde etmektedir. Verimli bir kod üreticisi ve dikkatlice oluşturulmuş bir matris özellikleri kümesi kullanarak, otomatik ayarlama ve özelleştirme süreçlerinin toplam koşut zaman masraflarının amortize edilebildiğini ve birçok gerçek-dünya matrisi için performans iyileştirmesi sağlanabileceğini gösterdik

The place and the efficacy of infectious disease consultations in the hospitals

Our study aims to determine the efficacy of infectious disease consultations and the interrelations between doctors in this social laboratory. This study was conducted at 34 centers located in 22 cities across Turkey and contributed by 210 infectious disease specialists (IDSs) and 970 non-infectious disease specialists (NIDSs), totaling 1180 medical doctors. Infectious disease specialists and NIDSs have separately contributed by responding to questionnaires designed specifically for the consultation process. It appears that a satisfactory collaboration has been established between IDSs and NIDSs during the consultation practices. There are some discrepancies in the perceptions of some of the NIDSs. These are the evaluation of patients holistically, the expectation of NIDSs in critical infection cases to start the therapy immediately, losing the support of drug companies by NIDSs, and the restriction of NIDSs in routine medical practice. On the other hand, NIDSs seem to have real problems in the diagnosis or treatment of infectious diseases. The consultation service provided by the IDSs in Turkey is widely accepted among other clinicians and appears to be of a crucial importance. Copyright © 2012 by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins