Three cirrhotic patients with intractable ascites and one patient with malignant ascites received dialytic ultrafiltration of ascitic fluid by a haemofilter system for symptomatic relief. The ...haemofilter removes fluid and substances with a molecular weight less than 50,000 daltons and the concentrated ascitic fluid was reinfused into the peritoneal cavity after ultrafiltration. The changes in intraperitoneal and hepatic venous wedge pressures were studied in these patients. Dialytic ultrafiltration of ascites was associated with a parallel fall of both intraperitoneal and hepatic venous wedge pressures in cirrhotic patients but not in the patient with malignant ascites. The intraperitoneal and hepatic venous wedge pressure remained low for 18 h after completion of dialytic ultrafiltration. The mean arterial pressure and central venous pressure remained unchanged despite rapid removal of ascitic fluid. The interrelationships between the intraperitoneal pressure, hepatic venous wedge pressure, and vascular volume are discussed.
Of 37 consecutive patients suffering from tuberculosis of the lumbosacral spine, 26 were reviewed after an average follow-up of 20 years. Those presenting at under 10 years of age usually had a ...discharging sinus or a pointing abscess and a visible kyphosis. In older patients, low back pain was the predominant presenting symptom. Neurological involvement was uncommon. Both operative and conservative treatment had resulted in fusion but all patients treated conservatively ended up with a kyphosis associated with trunk shortening. They had a higher incidence of back pain and more complications in pregnancy. Anterior debridement and fusion with a strut graft can reduce the incidence and size of kyphosis, but is technically demanding. Treatment remains difficult and requires individual consideration.
A group-and-screen system was introduced for selected surgical procedures to improve the cost-effectiveness of the hospital blood transfusion service. The mean crossmatch-transfusion ratio for eleven ...procedures was 11.1 but fell to 3.3 after the change. The overall crossmatch-transfusion ratio in the hospital improved from 2.7 to 2.2 (p less than 0.001) and blood wastage by expiry fell from 12% to 5% (p less than 0.02). The mean age of blood being transfused also improved slightly from 12.3 days to 10.4 days (p less than 0.001). No problems have arisen from the group-and-screen system to date. It has led to improvement in the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the hospital blood bank and resulted in fresher blood being transfused.
A survey of haematological values in Sydney was conducted in conjunction with the Sydney Coronary Heart Disease Prevention Programme. The sample consisted of 4374 ‘self-referred’ Sydney inhabitants ...between 11-90 yr of age. Comparison of the haemoglobin concentrations with those obtained in 2 previous Australian surveys suggested that the haemoglobin values in Australia have not varied in the last 25 yr.
Hypoglycemia is frequently reported in hemodialysis patients on propranolol. The effects of beta-blockers on the glucose, alanine and free fatty acid responses to glucagon challenge (2 mg) in ...fourteen hemodialysis patients were studied. Patients on propranolol had impaired glycemic response while those on metoprolol had decreased response only before dialysis. There was a significant negative correlation between propranolol level (log-transformed) and glycemic responses, suggesting that propranolol has direct effect on the latter. Hemodialysis patients had fasting alanine levels comparable to those of normal subjects. After glucagon challenge, the decrements in alanine level had no consistent relationship to the impaired glycemic response. Thus suppression of gluconeogenesis is unlikely to be the prime cause of propranolol-induced hypoglycemia. The basal free fatty acid levels were significantly lower among hemodialysis patients on propranolol. This limited availability of free fatty acid as well as the inhibitory effect on hepatic glucagon-stimulated glucose output may contribute to the predisposition to hypoglycemia in dialysis patients given propranolol. The results suggest that metoprolol has less interference on energy substrate supply in hemodialysis patients under fasting conditions.
Buried channel waveguides were fabricated in Er/sup 3+/-Yb/sup 3+/ co-doped phosphate glasses using focused proton beam irradiation. Net gain of the waveguide amplifiers at 1.534 /spl mu/m wavelength ...was /spl sim/1.3 dB/cm with 90 mW pump power.
The I/Q mismatches in a quadrature radio receiver designed for multi-channel reception can be frequency-dependent and limit its image rejection performance to an unacceptable level. In this paper, an ...adaptive signal-image separation system is proposed to correct the frequency-dependent I/Q mismatches in the digital domain. Simulation results verifying the proposed method are given.
Complex sub-sampling mixers are used in various kinds of image rejection receiver. The image rejection performance of these receivers is mainly limited by I/Q phase error. A digital calibration ...technique is proposed in this paper to correct this error. The phase error is measured by a statistical method with a local test signal, and is corrected in the baseband digital domain. With this method, the image rejection performance can be improved as much as 20 dB as indicated by high level simulation results.
Routine cytological examination and HPV-DNA probing were performed on cervical cells obtained from 215 pregnant Chinese females. The procedure utilized the specific binding of a mixture of ...complementary 32P-labelled RNA probes to membrane-bound target HPV DNA types 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33 and 35. Positive results for HPV-DNA were obtained in 11/215 (5%) of the cases. The cervical smears were routinely processed and in 3/215 (1.5%) cases a cytological diagnosis of wart virus infection was made. All three were included in the 11 probe-positive cases. Using similar molecular biological techniques, pregnant Western females have an incidence of HPV infection of the cervix which is up to five times that of the present series. This is an unexpected finding in view of the fact that the incidence of cervical cancer is higher in Chinese women than American women.
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