Technologies for global health Howitt, Peter, MA; Darzi, Ara, Prof; Yang, Guang-Zhong, Prof ...
The Lancet (British edition),
08/2012, Volume:
380, Issue:
9840
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Mechanical ventilation and intravenous sedation were initiated. Because of continuing spasms, intrathecal baclofen (1200 µg per day) was started on day 3 with a good clinical response. No ...recommendations about tetanus prophylaxis procedures for wound man agement in patients with blood diseases are available, except for bone-marrow transplantation.
Summary Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterised by airflow limitation, and has many components including mucus hypersecretion, oxidative stress, and airway ...inflammation. We aimed to assess whether carbocisteine, a mucolytic agent with anti-inflammatory and antioxidation activities, could reduce the yearly exacerbation rate in patients with COPD. Methods We did a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 709 patients from 22 centres in China. Participants were eligible if they were diagnosed as having COPD with a postbronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1 ) to forced vital capacity (FVC) ratio (FEV1 /FVC) of less than 0·7 and an FEV1 between 25% and 79% of the predicted value, were aged between 40 and 80 years, had a history of at least two COPD exacerbations within the previous 2 years, and had remained clinically stable for over 4 weeks before the study. Patients were randomly assigned to receive 1500 mg carbocisteine or placebo per day for a year. The primary endpoint was exacerbation rate over 1 year, and analysis was by intention to treat. This trial is registered with the Japan Clinical Trials Registry ( http://umin.ac.jp/ctr/index/htm ) number UMIN-CRT C000000233. Findings 354 patients were assigned to the carbocisteine group and 355 to the placebo group. Numbers of exacerbations per patient per year declined significantly in the carbocisteine group compared with the placebo group (1·01 SE 0·06 vs 1·35 SE 0·06), risk ratio 0·75 (95% CI 0·62–0·92, p=0·004). Non-significant interactions were found between the preventive effects and COPD severity, smoking, as well as concomitant use of inhaled corticosteroids. Carbocisteine was well tolerated. Interpretation Mucolytics, such as carbocisteine, should be recognised as a worthwhile treatment for prevention of exacerbations in Chinese patients with COPD. Funding Kyorin Pharmaceuticals.
Abstract Background Over the past decade image guidance systems have been widely adopted in specialties such as neurosurgery and otorhinolaryngology. Nonetheless, the evidence supporting the use of ...image guidance systems in surgery remains limited. New augmented reality systems offer the possibility of enhanced operating room workflow compared with existing triplanar image displays, but recent studies have highlighted several concerns, particularly the risk of inattentional blindness and impaired depth perception. The aim of this study was to compare simultaneously the effectiveness and safety of various image guidance systems against standard surgery. Methods In this preclinical randomised study design 50 novice surgeons were allocated to no image guidance, triplanar display, always-on solid overlay, always-on wire mesh overlay, or on-demand inverse realism overlay. Each participant was asked to identify a basilar tip aneurysm in a validated model head. The primary outcomes were time to task completion, and tool path length. The secondary outcomes were recognition of an unexpected finding (a surgical clip) and subjective depth perception (using a Likert scale). Findings Surgeons' time to task completion and tool path length were significantly lower in groups using any form of image guidance than in groups with no image guidance (p<0·001 and p=0·003, respectively). The tool path distance was also lower in groups using augmented reality than in those using triplanar display (p=0·010). Always-on solid overlay resulted in the greatest inattentional blindness (20% recognition of unexpected finding by all surgeons). Wire mesh and on-demand overlays mitigated but did not negate inattentional blindness, and were comparable with triplanar display (40% recognition of unexpected finding in all groups). Wire mesh and inverse realism overlays also resulted in better subjective depth perception than always-on solid overlay (p=0·031 and p=0·008, respectively). Interpretation This study suggests that new augmented reality platforms incorporating always-on wire mesh and on-demand inverse realism might improve surgical performance, at least in novice surgeons. All image display modalities, including existing triplanar display, carry a risk of inattentional blindness. Funding Wellcome Trust.
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