Anterior subcutaneous transposition of ulnar nerve with fascial flap and complete excision of medial intermuscular septum in cubital tunnel syndrome: A prospective patient cohort

Objective: Regarding the frequency of cubital tunnel syndrome, varieties of treatment modalities, and ambiguity of anterior subcutaneous transposition of ulnar nerve method, we aimed to evaluate the efficacy of this procedure in patients with cubital tunnel syndrome referred to Taleghani hospital between 2006 and 2009. Methods: This study was a case series including all referred patients with definite diagnosis of cubital tunnel syndrome, treated by anterior subcutaneous transposition. Treatment results were measured according to modified Bishop rating system, and were ranked into excellent, good, fair, and poor. Variables such as gender, age (less/more than 45 years), causation, and initial severity, determined by Dellon criteria preoperatively, were analyzed by Fisher’s exact test. Results: This study was performed on 26 eligible cases including 29 elbows, 38% males and 62.1% females, with mean age of 44.5 years (ranging 23–72 years). In a 12 months follow-up post-operatively, 62% showed excellent, 20.7% good, and 17.3% fair, with no poor result. In a 1–12 months follow-up post-operatively, results showed improvement, and initial severity and old age were demonstrated to significantly affect treatment results (P < 0.07). Conclusion: Though considered standard of care, the present study suggests that criteria for surgical techniques of ulnar nerve decompression, e.g. simple decompression vs. more extensive repair as in the present cohort, should be revised by controlled prospective studie

Optic Nerve Head Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography Findings after Coronavirus Disease

Purpose: To quantify the microvasculature density of the optic nerve head (ONH) using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) analysis in patients recovered from Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods: In a comparative cross-sectional, observational study, patients recovered from COVID- 19 whose initial diagnosis was confirmed by an rRT-PCR of a nasopharyngeal sample were included in this study. OCTA of ONH was performed in included patients and normal controls. Vascular density (VD) of the all vessels (AV) and small vessels (SV) inside the disc and radial peripapillary capillary (RPC) network density was measured in COVID-19 recovered patients and compared with similar parameters in an age-matched group of normal controls. Results: Twenty-five COVID-19 patients and twenty-two age-matched normal controls were enrolled in the study and one eye per participant was evaluated. The mean whole image SV VD in the COVID-19 group (49.31 ± 1.93) was not statistically significantly different from that in the control group (49.94 ±. 2.22; P = 0.308). A decrease in RPC VD was found in all AV and SV VD measured, which became statistically significant in whole peripapillary SV VD, peripapillary inferior nasal SV VD, peripapillary inferior temporal SV VD, peripapillary superior nasal SV VD, and grid-based AV VD inferior sector (P &lt; 0.05). Inside disc SV VD in the COVID-19 group (49.43 ± 4.96) was higher than in the control group (45.46 ± 6.22) which was statistically significant (P = 0.021). Conclusion: Unremarkable decrease was found in ONH microvasculature in patients who had recovered from COVID-19. These patients may be at risk of ONH vascular complications. Increase in inner disc SV VD may be an indicator of ONH hyperemia and edema

The factors affecting Interim financial reports lag

The timely access to published periodical information of listed companies is one of the investors’ main concerns. Past studies in TSE shows the lack of timely disclosure and delay in company's interim audited reports in recent years. This study aimed to determine the effects of seven factors affecting delay, such as age, industry, size, capital structure, growth, profitability and volume. The population includes all companies they accepted and listed before 2004. Then 103 companies have been selected as research sample. Data analysis was done with Panel Data method. After reviewing the data by descriptive method we used statistical tests. The Mean time of delay for sample companies reporting was about 62 days. After performing all tests , we can say that there is a significant relation between age with delay in interim financial reports. This means that if a company has older age then it has delays less than the deadline.So other independent variables do not have significant relationship with lag

Performance analysis of dynamic workflow scheduling in multicluster grids

Scientists increasingly rely on the execution of workflows in grids to obtain results from complex mixtures of applications. However, the inherently dynamic nature of grid workflow scheduling, stemming from the unavailability of scheduling information and from resource contention among the (multiple) workflows and the non-workflow system load, may lead to poor or unpredictable performance. In this paper we present a comprehensive and realistic investigation of the performance of a wide range of dynamic workflow scheduling policies in multicluster grids. We first introduce a taxonomy of grid workflow scheduling policies that is based on the amount of dynamic information used in the scheduling process, and map to this taxonomy seven such policies across the full spectrum of information use. Then, we analyze the performance of these scheduling policies through simulations and experiments in a real multicluster grid. We find that there is no single grid workflow scheduling policy with good performance across all the investigated scenarios. We also find from our real system experiments that with demanding workloads, the limitations of the head-nodes of the grid clusters may lead to performance loss not expected from the simulation results. We show that task throttling, that is, limiting the per-workflow number of tasks dispatched to the system, prevents the head-nodes from becoming overloaded while largely preserving performance, at least for communication-intensive workflows. 1