465 research outputs found
A qualitative study of the contribution of pharmacists to heart failure management in Scotland
Study objectives: (1) To identify the medication management needs of chronic heart failure (CHF) patients and their caregivers; (2) To examine the perceived support for medication management available to these people from health professionals; (3) To identify the actual and potential perceived contribution of pharmacists to medication management.
Setting: A mixed urban/ rural region in the west of Scotland.
Design: Semi-structured qualitative research interviews.
Participants: A total of 50 people with CHF (NYHA Class II and III) due to left ventricular systolic dysfunction (33 males; mean age 67 years, 17 females; mean age 68 years) and 30 nominated caregivers recruited from the outpatient departments of two hospitals in the West of Scotland. Sampling was purposive to include patients from a range of CHF severity, ages and sexes.
Main results: Managing medications was a responsibility shared by both the patients with CHF and caregivers. Treatment regimens were reported to be difficult to comply with. Health professionals were seen to provide little support for medication management. Pharmacists were viewed as being a good and accessible source of practical assistance who were also knowledgeable about the individualâs heart health history. Participants reported valuing advice from pharmacists about the side effects of medications and for their assistance in reducing the complex logistics of medication management and in having medications delivered.
Conclusions: Patients with CHF and caregivers voiced a willingness to try to manage their medication regimen accurately but had a limited capacity to do so. Pharmacists were viewed as providing valuable support to patients with CHF and their caregivers, in terms of medication management. The extended role of pharmacists in medication management of CHF should be encouraged
Randomised controlled trial of specialist nurse intervention in heart failure
<p>Objectives. To determine whether specialist nurse intervention improves outcome in patients with chronic heart failure.</p>
<p>Design. Randomised controlled trial.</p>
<p>Setting. Acute medical admissions unit in a teaching hospital.</p>
<p>Participants. 165 patients admitted with heart failure due to left ventricular systolic dysfunction. The intervention started before discharge and continued thereafter with home visits for up to 1 year.</p>
<p>Main outcome measures. Time to first event analysis of death from all causes or readmission to hospital with worsening heart failure.</p>
<p>Results. 31 patients (37%) in the intervention group died or were readmitted with heart failure compared with 45 (53%) in the usual care group (hazard ratio=0.61, 95% confidence interval 0.33 to 0.96).Compared with usual care, patients in the intervention group had fewer readmissions for any reason (86 v 114, P=0.018), fewer admissions for heart failure (19 v 45, P<0.001) and spent fewer days in hospital for heart failure (mean 3.43 v 7.46 days, P=0.0051).</p>
<p>Conclusions. Specially trained nurses can improve the outcome of patients admitted to hospital with heart failure.</p>
The Toric Phases of the Y^{p,q} Quivers
We construct all connected toric phases of the recently discovered
quivers and show their IR equivalence using Seiberg duality. We also compute
the R and global U(1) charges for a generic toric phase of .Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure
"Holey Sheets" - Pfaffians and Subdeterminants as D-brane Operators in Large N Gauge Theories
In the AdS/CFT correspondence, wrapped D3-branes (such as "giant gravitons")
on the string theory side of the correspondence have been identified with
Pfaffian, determinant and subdeterminant operators on the field theory side. We
substantiate this identification by showing that the presence of pairs of such
operators in a correlation function of a large N gauge theory naturally leads
to a modified 't Hooft expansion including also worldsheets with boundaries.
This happens independently of supersymmetry or conformal invariance.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figures, harvma
Exceptional Collections and del Pezzo Gauge Theories
Stacks of D3-branes placed at the tip of a cone over a del Pezzo surface
provide a way of geometrically engineering a small but rich class of
gauge/gravity dualities. We develop tools for understanding the resulting
quiver gauge theories using exceptional collections. We prove two important
results for a general quiver gauge theory: 1) we show the ordering of the nodes
can be determined up to cyclic permutation and 2) we derive a simple formula
for the ranks of the gauge groups (at the conformal point) in terms of the
numbers of bifundamentals. We also provide a detailed analysis of four node
quivers, examining when precisely mutations of the exceptional collection are
related to Seiberg duality.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figure; v2 footnote 2 amended; v3 ref adde
Dibaryon Spectroscopy
The AdS/CFT correspondence relates dibaryons in superconformal gauge theories
to holomorphic curves in Kaehler-Einstein surfaces. The degree of the
holomorphic curves is proportional to the gauge theory conformal dimension of
the dibaryons. Moreover, the number of holomorphic curves should match, in an
appropriately defined sense, the number of dibaryons. Using AdS/CFT backgrounds
built from the generalized conifolds of Gubser, Shatashvili, and Nekrasov
(1999), we show that the gauge theory prediction for the dimension of
dibaryonic operators does indeed match the degree of the corresponding
holomorphic curves. For AdS/CFT backgrounds built from cones over del Pezzo
surfaces, we are able to match the degree of the curves to the conformal
dimension of dibaryons for the n'th del Pezzo surface, n=1,2,...,6. Also, for
the del Pezzos and the A_k type generalized conifolds, for the dibaryons of
smallest conformal dimension, we are able to match the number of holomorphic
curves with the number of possible dibaryon operators from gauge theory.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures, corrected refs; v3 typos correcte
New results on superconformal quivers
All superconformal quivers are shown to satisfy the relation c = a and are
thus good candidates for being the field theory living on D3 branes probing CY
singularities. We systematically study 3 block and 4 block chiral quivers which
admit a superconformal fixed point of the RG equation. Most of these theories
are known to arise as living on D3 branes at a singular CY manifold, namely
complex cones over del Pezzo surfaces. In the process we find a procedure of
getting a new superconformal quiver from a known one. This procedure is termed
"shrinking" and, in the 3 block case, leads to the discovery of two new models.
Thus, the number of superconformal 3 block quivers is 16 rather than the
previously known 14. We prove that this list exausts all the possibilities. We
suggest that all rank 2 chiral quivers are either del Pezzo quivers or can be
obtained by shrinking a del Pezzo quiver and verify this statement for all 4
block quivers, where a lot of "shrunk'' del Pezzo models exist.Comment: 51 pages, many figure
Exceptional collections and D-branes probing toric singularities
We demonstrate that a strongly exceptional collection on a singular toric
surface can be used to derive the gauge theory on a stack of D3-branes probing
the Calabi-Yau singularity caused by the surface shrinking to zero size. A
strongly exceptional collection, i.e., an ordered set of sheaves satisfying
special mapping properties, gives a convenient basis of D-branes. We find such
collections and analyze the gauge theories for weighted projective spaces, and
many of the Y^{p,q} and L^{p,q,r} spaces. In particular, we prove the strong
exceptionality for all p in the Y^{p,p-1} case, and similarly for the
Y^{p,p-2r} case.Comment: 49 pages, 6 figures; v2 refs added; v3 published versio
Dibaryons from Exceptional Collections
We discuss aspects of the dictionary between brane configurations in del
Pezzo geometries and dibaryons in the dual superconformal quiver gauge
theories. The basis of fractional branes defining the quiver theory at the
singularity has a K-theoretic dual exceptional collection of bundles which can
be used to read off the spectrum of dibaryons in the weakly curved dual
geometry. Our prescription identifies the R-charge R and all baryonic U(1)
charges Q_I with divisors in the del Pezzo surface without any Weyl group
ambiguity. As one application of the correspondence, we identify the cubic
anomaly tr R Q_I Q_J as an intersection product for dibaryon charges in large-N
superconformal gauge theories. Examples can be given for all del Pezzo surfaces
using three- and four-block exceptional collections. Markov-type equations
enforce consistency among anomaly equations for three-block collections.Comment: 47 pages, 11 figures, corrected ref
A New Infinite Class of Quiver Gauge Theories
We construct a new infinite family of N=1 quiver gauge theories which can be
Higgsed to the Y^{p,q} quiver gauge theories. The dual geometries are toric
Calabi-Yau cones for which we give the toric data. We also discuss the action
of Seiberg duality on these quivers, and explore the different Seiberg dual
theories. We describe the relationship of these theories to five dimensional
gauge theories on (p,q) 5-branes. Using the toric data, we specify some of the
properties of the corresponding dual Sasaki-Einstein manifolds. These theories
generically have algebraic R-charges which are not quadratic irrational
numbers. The metrics for these manifolds still remain unknown.Comment: 29 pages, JHE
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