68 research outputs found

    陽電子放出断層撮影法と単光子放出断層撮影法による心筋梗塞サイズの定量性に関する基礎的検討

    Get PDF
    取得学位:博士(医学), 学位授与番号:医博甲第1483号, 学位授与年月日:平成13年4月30日, 学位授与年:200

    Regional wall thickening in gated myocardial perfusion SPECT in a Japanese population: Effect of sex, radiotracer, rotation angles and frame rates

    Get PDF
    金沢大学医薬保健研究域医学系Purpose: Gated single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging of myocardium by 99mTc and 201Tl is used extensively to measure quantitative cardiac functional parameters. However, factors affecting normal values for myocardial functional parameters and population-specific standards have not yet been established. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of sex, radiotracer, rotation angles and frame rates on resting myocardial wall thickening (WT) and to develop a Japanese standard of normal values for WT. Methods: Data from a total of 202 patients with low possibility of having cardiac problems were collected from nine hospitals throughout Japan. Patients were divided into five groups according to study protocol, and WT was evaluated according to the 17-segment and four-region (basal, mid and apical regions and the apex) polar map distribution. Result: WT was generally higher in women than in men irrespective of the use of radiotracers, rotation angles or frame rates, and the difference was highly significant in the mid and apical regions. In any protocol used, resting myocardial thickening in the apex was higher than in the mid and apical regions, and thickening was lowest in the basal region, suggesting heterogeneous regional myocardial thickening (%) in normal subjects. Different rotation angles showed no significant change on WT, but different frame rates and tracers showed significant WT change in both sexes. Percent thickening of the myocardium was significantly higher in imaging by 99mTc-labelled tracers than in 201Tl. Conclusion: Sex, radiotracers and frame rates had a significant effect on myocardial thickening, and the importance of population-specific standards should be emphasized. A normal database can serve as a standard for gated SPECT evaluation of myocardial thickening in a Japanese population and might be applicable to Asian populations having a similar physique. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.This article has not been published yet

    Hydrogen Isotope (H2 and D2) Sorption Study of CHA-Type Zeolites

    Get PDF
    Using either single H2 and D2 or H2-D2 mixed gases, the sorption abilities of CHA (chabazite)-type zeolites ion-exchanged with K, Na, or Ca were studied at 77, 201, and 250 K. The LTA (Linde Type A) (3A) and FAU (faujasite)-type zeolites were also examined for comparison. The pore diameters in these materials were found to decrease on the order of FAU > Ca-CHA > [K-CHA, Na-CHA, and LTA(3A)]. The quantities of D2 adsorbed on these zeolites were larger than the amounts of H2. At higher temperatures, the CHA-type zeolites having smaller pores exhibited superior D2/H2 selectivity compared with the LTA(3A) and FAU, suggesting that hydrogen isotope separation using zeolites is affected by pore size

    Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

    Get PDF
    Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

    Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

    Get PDF
    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

    Prevention of Surgery-Induced Dry Eye by Diquafosol Eyedrops after Femtosecond Laser-Assisted Cataract Surgery

    No full text
    Purpose: To analyze the protective effects of diquafosol eyedrops on the ocular surface following femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery (FLACS). Design: A prospective, randomized contralateral study. Methods: Bilateral FLACS with a trifocal IOL (PanOptix) implantation was performed in 40 eyes in 20 patients (10 males, 10 females, average age 68.8 ± 6.3 years old). Patients received 3% diquafosol eyedrops six times daily in one randomly chosen eye (diquafosol group), and physiological saline six times a day in the other eye (control group). Other medication included 1.5% levofloxacin, 0.1% dexamethasone and 0.1% diclofenac three times daily in both eyes. The pre and post-operative tear break-up time (BUT), superficial punctate keratopathy (SPK) scores and visual function were compared between both eyes, and all patients answered the dry-eye-related quality of life score (DEQS) questionnaire. Results: The BUT between groups was similar pre-operatively and on the first day post-op; however, the BUT was statistically longer in the diquafosol group compared to saline at 1 week (5.5/3.7 s) and 2 weeks (4.8/3.0 s) (p < 0.05). There was no difference in the SPK score, best corrected distance visual acuity, tear meniscus height, contrast sensitivity, DEQS and Schirmer test at all time points. Spherical aberration was statistically lower in the diquafosol group at 1 week. The protective effects of diquafosol on the BUT was more pronounced in patients with a pre-operative BUT of less than 5 s compared with those with a BUT longer than 6 s. Conclusions: Diquafosol eyedrops prevented the shortening of the BUT following FLACS, even in patients with short pre-operative BUT values
    corecore