Worldwide, cardiovascular events represent the major cause of morbidity and mortality. A key role in the pathogenesis of these events is played by platelets. Interventional procedures, with placement ...of coronary and vascular stents, often represent the preferred therapeutic strategy. Antiplatelet medications are considered first-line therapy in preventing cardiovascular thrombotic events. A wide array of antiplatelet agents is available, each with different pharmacological properties. When patients on antiplatelet agents present for surgery, the perioperative team must design an optimal strategy to manage antiplatelet medications. Each patient is stratified according to risk of developing a cardiovascular thrombotic event and inherent risk of surgical bleeding. After risk stratification analysis, various therapeutic pathways include continuing or discontinuing all antiplatelet agents or maintaining one antiplatelet agent and discontinuing the other. This review focuses on the pharmacological and pharmacokinetic properties of both older and novel antiplatelet drugs, and reviews current literature and guidelines addressing options for perioperative antiplatelet management.
Nuclear reactions induced by fast neutrons starting from 0.5 up to 25 MeV with emission of alpha particles were investigated. Cross-sections, angular correlations and, forward–backward asymmetry ...effects were evaluated with reaction code TALYS and the author’s own computer codes. Contribution to the cross-section of nuclear reaction mechanisms like direct, compound, and pre-equilibrium together with discrete and continuum states of residual nuclei were determined. Theoretical evaluations are compared with existing experimental data and parameters of nuclear potential in incident and emergent channels were obtained. Using cross section and angular correlation data from reaction code TALYS, the forward–backward effect is obtained for different incident neutron energies and target with given thickness and radius. The simulated forward–backward asymmetry coefficient is sensibly lower than the effect measured in the experiment. The difference can be explained by the presence of other emergent channels including alpha particles and not by the presence of so-called non-statistical effects.
Production of
94
Nb isotopes obtained in
94
Mo(
n
,
p
)
94
Nb and
95
Mo(
n
,
np
)
94
Nb fast neutrons induced nuclear reactions was analyzed. Cross sections, isomer ratios, contributions of nuclear ...reactions mechanism related to discrete and continuum states were obtained and parameters of nuclear potentials were extracted. Theoretical cross section calculations are in good agreement with existing experimental data.
Nuclear data obtained in the neutron induced fission of
232
Th nucleus are of great importance for advanced fast reactors based on Th fuel cycle. Fission cross sections, mass and charge ...distributions, prompt emission in fission including neutron multiplicities, yields and cross-sections of some isotopes of interest for applications, isomer ratios were obtained. This paper presents the theoretical predictions and the first results on
232
Th(n,f) by applying Talys and the author’s computer code for modeling of nuclear reaction mechanisms and the fission process. Theoretical evaluations of fission observables and produced isotopes are compared with existing experimental data and with similar data for neutrons induced fission of
233
U nucleus. The present researches on
232
Th(n,f) reaction are realized in the frame of nuclear data program running at Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna) basic facilities, IREN, and MT-25 Microtron.
The potential of medical therapy to influence the courses and outcomes of patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms is not known. The aim of this study was to determine whether statin intake is ...associated with improved long-term outcomes in these patients. A total of 649 patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms were studied, of whom 147 were taking statins at their first presentation and 502 were not. After a median follow-up period of 3.6 years, 30 patients (20%) taking statins had died, compared with 167 patients (33%) not taking statins (hazard ratio 0.68, 95% confidence interval 0.46 to 1, p = 0.049); 87 patients (59%) taking statins reached the composite end point of death, rupture, dissection, or repair compared with 378 patients (75%) not taking statins (hazard ratio 0.72, 95% confidence interval 0.57 to 0.91, p = 0.006). After adjustments for co-morbidities, the association between statin therapy and the composite end point was driven mainly by a reduction in aneurysm repairs (hazard ratio 0.57 95% confidence interval 0.4 to 0.83, p = 0.003). On Kaplan-Meier analysis, the survival rate of patients taking statins was significantly better (p = 0.047). In conclusion, the intake of stains was associated with an improvement in long-term outcomes in this cohort of patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms. This was driven mainly by a reduction in aneurysm repairs.
Insufficient hand hygiene compliance of Health care workers is a widespread problem in medicine leading to several preventable infections each year. Hence, World Health Organization (WHO) presumes, ...that up to 1 in 10 patients acquires a Health care associated infection (HCAI) while receiving treatment in health care facilities. Apart from hand hygiene adherence and compliance, a correct hand disinfection technique regarding the amount of hand rub and exposure time is crucial for hand hygiene efficacy. Since alcohol-based hand rub is prevalent in the medical sector, the present study presents a new method for anonymous, electronic hand hygiene monitoring with commercial Ethanol gas sensors. In contrast to previous attempts of electronic monitoring, which mostly merely count the amount of hand hygiene actions, the present approach exploits different algorithms of Machine Learning to assess and categorize the hand disinfection technique into correct and incorrect. To demonstrate functionality of the mentioned approach, labeled hand disinfection data was collected in a pilot study over the period of one year with two different sensor setups. In detail, on the one hand a commercial portable gas sensor tag is used, which can be directly attached to the surgical gown. On the other hand, the performance of several commercial gas sensors is investigated, which are stationarily mounted next to the hand rub dispenser station. The present study follows three subgoals: Firstly, suitability of the stationary vs. portable setup shall be assessed. Secondly, the adequacy of different commercial gas sensor types is evaluated and thirdly the performance of possible algorithms for time series classification of the given sensor response is investigated, i.e. Support Vector Machines (SVM) as well as different Deep Learning algorithms, such as Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Fully Convolutional Neural Networks (FCN) and a Bidirectional Long-Short-Term Memory network (Bi-LSTM). It could be found that the stationary setup is significantly superior compared to the portable setup. For most of the sensors within this stationary setup an accuracy score between 85% and 87% could be obtained for classification of correctly and incorrectly performed hand disinfections.
•Over 500 labelled hand disinfections are generated and monitored with a portable sensor tag and 4 stationary gas sensors.•Correct and incorrect hand disinfection events are classified with 5 different algorithms for time series classification.•Correct and incorrect hand disinfections can be distinguished with an accuracy up to 85–87% for independent test data.•It could be shown that a stationary gas sensor setup is significantly superior to a portable setup.•Benchmark study for anonymous electronic monitoring of a correct execution of hand hygiene in hospitals.
Temperature, gas and humidity resistive/capacitive sensors on plastic substrates, suitable for mobile applications, like smart RFID tags, have been produced and investigated. The sensor concept is ...providing simple, versatile and low power solutions for temperature, humidity and gas detection. The device structure was devised together with the data evaluation strategies based on the latest generation ΣΔ analog (resistance and capacitance) to digital converters. The possibility of developing gas sensors on humidity sensitive substrates, having temperature corrected responses is demonstrated. The proposed sensor is aimed to evolve towards “flexible and full plastic” implementations.
•We successfully deposited composite quercetin dehydrate-, resveratrol- and silver nanoparticle-polyvinylpyrrolidone thin coatings with chemical structure close to that of the starting materials by ...MAPLE.•Thin film morphology studies revealed a uniform surface without aggregates or grains on the top of the surface.•MAPLE-deposited thin films exhibited antibacterial activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains.•We demonstrated the potential use of these hybrid systems and MAPLE deposition method for the development of new harmless, ecological antimicrobial strategies.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the interactions between microorganisms, including the planktonic and adherent organisms, and biopolymer (polyvinylpyrrolidone), flavonoid (quercetin dihydrate and resveratrol)-biopolymer, and silver nanoparticles-biopolymer composite thin films that were deposited using matrix assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE). A pulsed KrF* excimer laser source was used to deposit the aforementioned composite thin films, which were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), infrared microscopy (IRM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The antimicrobial activity of thin films was quantified using an adapted disk diffusion assay against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria strains. FT-IR, AFM and SEM studies confirmed that MAPLE may be used to fabricate thin films with chemical properties corresponding to the input materials as well as surface properties that are appropriate for medical use. The silver nanoparticles and flavonoid-containing films exhibited an antimicrobial activity both against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains demonstrating the potential use of these hybrid systems for the development of novel antimicrobial strategies.
Resistance projection welding is a non-polluting mechanized process used to obtain an assembly between similar or dissimilar metallic materials. The main advantages of this welding process are the ...possibility to achieve many different welded points at the same time and the long life of the electrodes compared to the spot-welding process. The paper analyses the effects of thin aluminium coating existing on mild steel parts of on the correct formation of welding points when assembling moulds for the manufacture of baking bread. From optical and electron microscopy analyses it resulted that some adjacent welded points show an interrupted fusion line, sprinkled with elongated islands of aluminium-rich compounds. The paper presents the effect of changing the values of the welding parameters on the weld spot size, in correlation with the Al-rich inclusions that appear on the weld fusion zone. The best results have been obtained when the welding parameters values were the follows: electrode pressure of 2.6 bar, welding power of 19.18kVA and welding time of 7ms. The problems that occur when electric resistance welding of parts with aluminium coating have been highlighted, being useful for specialists who make products using this welding process.
A new method for investigation of the swelling of polymers on exposure to gas or vapour has been devised and tested. It uses an optical profilometer (based on the chromatic aberration of a lens ...system) which is integrated into a computer-controlled gas-dosing and mixing setup. Gas and/or vapour concentration-dependent measurements have been carried out for thick layers of the polymers commonly used in gravimetric and capacitive gas sensors: poly(acrylic acid) (PAA), poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP), poly(ether urethane) (PEUT), and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The thickness of PAA, PVP, and PEUT films changed significantly on exposure to humidity. These data have been used to derive the sorption isotherms of the respective polymers, which were found to be Henry or Flory–Huggins isotherms. Comparison of the geometrical (swelling) responses with capacitive responses revealed a strong correlation. The correlation, which occurs because both types of response are proportional to the water content of the polymer, is also valid for polymers with nonlinear gas responses. Finally the geometrical and electrical characteristics of the capacitive samples were used to explain the dependence of the capacitive response of different polymers on the concentration of the target gas or vapour. In this way was deduced that PDMS, which does not swell on exposure to humidity, swells in the presence of 2,3-dimethylpentane, for which no profilometer evaluations are yet available.
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