Patient awareness and symptoms from an incisional hernia

Incisional hernia is a common postoperative complication following open abdominal surgery with incidence varying between 3% and 20%.1 Approximately half of all incisional hernias are diagnosed within 1 year following surgery. In the United Kingdom alone, about 10,000 incisional hernia repairs are performed annually. Incisional hernia repairs are generally elective with emergency repair due to incarceration or strangulation constituting about 15% of repairs.1 Incisional hernia repair is not a low-risk operation and generally has relatively poor results due to chronic postoperative pain and high recurrence rates.2−3 Little has been published on patients' awareness of incisional hernia following open abdominal surgery. Moreover, there are very few publications on indications for incisional hernia repair and on the natural course of such hernias. The literature suggests that symptoms and complaints usually presented by patients include pain, discomfort, cosmetic complaints, skin problems, incarceration, strangulation, functional disability, and pulmonary dysfunction.4−6 The aim of this study was to investigate whether patients were aware that they had a hernia. In addition, we sought to determine symptoms for those who knew that they had an incisional hernia

Distribution of intertidal upogebiid shrimp (Crustacea : Decapoda : Thalassinidea) in Japan

The distributions of six intertidal species of Upogebiidae were determined by collecting shrimp from 74 sites on tidal flats and boulder beaches in Japan, from northern Honshu (the main island of Japan) to the Ryukyu Archipelago (southwestern Japan). Upogebia major, U. issaeffi, and Austinogebia narutensis were not found in the Ryukyu Archipelago, whereas U. carinicauda and U. pugnax were collected only from the Ryukyus or warmer regions exposed to the Kuroshio Current. Upogebia yokoyai was collected all over Japan and was the most common species in this study. From the viewpoint of habitat, U. yokoyai and U. issaeffi were unique in that the former was distributed mainly on brackish tidal flats and the latter mainly on boulder beaches. The identity of the upogebiid shrimp in some reports was corrected

What is the literal meaning of a sentence?

In this paper, Katz and Searle's controversy over literal meaning will be discussed in the light of relevance theory. Although their notions are drastically different, these notions have their places in utterance interpretation processes and there is no point in deciding whose notion is right. Katz's notion can be characterised as a relevance notion logical form which is an output of the hearer's knowledge of grammar, while Searle's, propositional form, which is a contextually enriched logical form. 1 will introduce a relevance notion literal interpretation which can not only be contrasted with figurative use, but also with non-figurative loose use (e.g. France is hexagonai)

Effort and Collective Creation: Experience in Air Traffic Control Work

How can work also represent a perspective of creation? We start from the hypothesis that air traffic controllers make an effort to cope with very hard work and to develop improvement processes when carrying out the activity, which can be considered creation. Our objective is to analyze the working conditions of air traffic controllers starting from the experience of the controller. There is effort, which is above all both cognitive and physical, of an activity developed with mental representations that cannot always be analyzed by simple observation. This is a reflection based on studies carried out with air traffic controllers since 1997 in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro

The ADR Loophole to Restrictive Non-Compete Agreements

This Comment considers a key question: do employers have a strategy to protect themselves if these restrictive states are restricting corporations from protecting their self-developed trade secrets? In doing so, Part II will discuss an approach that may allow employers to potentially circumvent the restrictive states. This can be achieved by requiring an employee to undergo private arbitration in a dispute with an employer—a strategy that has gained validity in light of the United States Supreme Court’s holding that upholds arbitration clauses even where significant public policy concerns exist. Specifically, an employer in a restrictive state could potentially enforce an arbitration through a choice of law clause that would provide the employer an opportunity to follow another state’s more lenient approach for non-compete agreements