Accurate evaluation of the size, location and adjacent structure of an atrial septal defect (ASD) is very important in the selection of patients for further management. We directly compared the ...utility of transthoracic echocardiography, angiocardiography, balloon sizing, and intracardiac ultrasound (ICUS) in the detection of ASD.
Twenty-one children underwent an ICUS study of ASD after routine clinical and laboratory studies. All patients had received transthoracic echocardiography (TTE), cardiac catheterization, cineangiography, and balloon sizing before the ICUS to evaluate the ASD.
There was a significant correlation between the ICUS-derived ASD diameter and the other methods (p < 0.001). The balloon-sizing diameter was estimated by the equation: TTE diameter x 1.09 + 3.9 mm. There was a good correlation between the predicted and measured balloon-sizing diameter (r = 0.963; p < 0.001).
It is worthwhile spending a few minutes to perform ICUS during cardiac catheterization since it will provide more detailed information on and high resolution images of atrial septal morphology, especially for patients undergoing transcatheter closure by device.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death (SCD) in young people in the USA. Pre-participation screening for athletes might reduce the incidence of SCD. In Singapore, ...military service is compulsory for all young able-bodied male citizens. The Singapore Armed Forces Electrocardiogram and Echocardiogram (SAFE) pre-participation screening protocol based on the Italian programme was introduced. This study evaluates the prevalence of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in a young male South-East Asian population.
From October 2008 to May 2009, all male military conscripts underwent pre-participation screening. For all conscripts whose electrocardiogram (ECG) findings fulfilled any of these pre-specified criteria (Group A), direct referral for a transthoracic echocardiogram was mandatory. Conscripts with ECG findings other than pre-specified criteria (e.g. T-wave inversions, repolarization abnormalities) were referred for secondary screening by cardiologists (Group B), which could include echocardiography. Out of 18 476 subjects screened during the study period, 988 (5.3%) subjects were fast tracked for echocardiogram (Group A). Of them, there were three (0.3%) cases with severe abnormalities; there was one case each of HCM, bicuspid aortic valve with significant aortic valve regurgitation, and atrial septal defect with right ventricular systolic dysfunction. The patient with HCM had left axis deviation on ECG. None of the 215 patients who underwent echocardiography following cardiology consult (Group B) had HCM.
The prevalence of HCM in our young male population (mean age 19.5, range 16-27) using an ECG-based screening protocol was 0.005%; this appeared lower than published data from other geographical cohorts. Possible explanations include a later age of phenotypic manifestation in our population, limitations of the ECG criteria for screening, or a truly lower prevalence of HCM. More population-based longitudinal studies would be needed to ascertain the true prevalence of HCM in our South-East Asian population.
Background Data of classical inborn errors of metabolism （IEM） of amino acids, organic acids and fatty acid oxidation are largely lacking in Hong Kong, where mass spectrometry-based expanded newborn ...screening for IEM has not been initiated. The current study aimed to evaluate the approximate incidence, spectrum and other characteristics of classical IEM in Hong Kong, which would be important in developing an expanded newborn screening program for the local area.
Image cytometry is the process of converting image data to flow cytometry-style plots, and it usually requires computer-aided surface creation to extract out statistics for cells or structures. One ...way of dealing with structures stained with multiple markers in three-dimensional images, is carrying out multiple rounds of channel co-localization and image masking before surface creation, which is cumbersome and laborious. We propose the application of the hue-saturation-brightness color space to streamline this process, which produces complete surfaces, and allows the user to have a global view of the data before flexibly defining cell subsets. Spectral compensation can also be performed after surface creation to accurately resolve different signals. We demonstrate the utility of this workflow in static and dynamic imaging datasets of a needlestick injury on the mouse ear, and we believe this scalable and intuitive approach will improve the ease of performing histocytometry on biological samples.
Cadmium sulfide (CdS) was in situ synthesized onto mesoporous TiO(2) films and used as a sensitizer to fabricate a photoelectrode for hydrogen generation in visible light. The incorporation of CdS ...extends the optical absorption threshold of a TiO(2) electrode to visible light, enhancing the visible-light-induced photocurrent. A maximum photoconversion efficiency of 3.67% was achieved for this CdS-sensitized TiO(2) electrode under visible light illumination of 100 mW cm(-2). The hydrogen generation rate obtained at conditions of maximum efficiency is 95.5 µmol cm(-2) h(-1). To the best of our knowledge, the hydrogen generation rate is the highest among those reported for a photoelectrochemical cell under the illumination of visible light.
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