CONTEXT The degree to which financial factors may influence use of cardiac stress imaging procedures is unknown. OBJECTIVE To examine the association of physician billing and nuclear stress and stress echocardiography testing following coronary revascularization. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS Using data from a national health insurance carrier, 17,847 patients were identified between Novemb...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to determine the fiscal impact of implementation of a novel emergency department (ED) point-of-care (POC) ultrasound billing and reimbursement program. METHODS This was a single-center retrospective study at an academic medical center. A novel POC ultrasound billing protocol was implemented using the Q-path Web-based image archival system. Patient care ult...

Aim: To determine seroprevalence and haematological parameters of some wild and semidomesticated birds naturally infected with avian pox virus (APV). Methods: A total of 160 birds belonging to 12 species were used for the study. Serum samples obtained from these birds were analyzed for antibodies to Avian Pox Virus (APV) using agar gel precipitation test. Natt-Herricks methods and thin blood sm...

In diet analyses of seabirds, fatty acid signatures (FAS) can be used to overcome biases due to differential digestion of prey and enable the analysis of very digested diet samples. We applied FAS analysis to stomach contents of a small sub-Antarctic seabird, the Thin-billed Prion Pachyptila belcheri, which feeds mainly on squid during incubation and on crustacea during chick rearing . This sea...

Key facets of the foraging ecology of seabirds during the inter-breeding period still remain poorly understood because of the difficulty of studying them at sea, including during the energy-demanding molting stage. Here, the extent to which three sympatric petrels (Antarctic and thin-billed prions, and blue petrel) from the subantarctic Kerguelen Islands modify their foraging ecology during mol...