BACKGROUND Prosthetic valve leak is a possible complication of surgical valve replacement. Although uncommon, its consequences may be serious. Few studies correlate the degree of prosthetic valve leak with clinical events. OBJECTIVE To compare the postoperative outcome of patients with mild/moderate (Mi/Mo) or severe (Sev) prosthetic valve leak METHODS A total of 185 patients with prostheti...

 Background: Proposing a strategy for sellar reconstruction in endoscopic transsphenoidal transsellar approach for pituitary adenoma. Methods: 240 patients with pituitary adenoma underwent pure endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal surgery. Intra-operative CSF leaks were classified as grade 0, no observable leak grade 1, CSF dripping through an arachnoid membrane defect of less than 1 ...

The efficient use of water resources is a subject of major concern for water utilities and authorities. One of the main challenges in improving the efficiency of drinking water networks is to minimize water loss in pipes due to leakage. Water leaks in water distribution networks are unavoidable. They can cause significant economic losses in fluid transportation and an increase on reparation cos...

Two strategies of case marking in natural languages are discussed. These are defined as two violable constraints whose effects are shown to converge in the case of differential object marking but diverge in the case of differential subject marking. The strength of the case bearing arguments will be shown to be of utmost importance for case marking as well as voice alternations. The strength of ...

Probabilistic Packet Marking (PPM) is one of the methods on IP traceback. In this method, intermediate router embeds (i.e., marks) the address of itself into the header of the sampled packet. However, because the PPM does not have a mechanism to avoid overrides of marking information, there is a problem that it requires a lot of packets to reconstruct attack route. We previously proposed two ma...

Background: CSF leak during or after transsphenoidal surgery is the most common annoying complication that may lead to fatal meningitis. Objective: To define the effectiveness of the external CSF lumbar drain to stop the leak either inserted preoperative, immediate postoperative or delayed postoperative with the same figure of packing to the sella turcica and sphenoid sinus. Methods: We retrosp...

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of a simple method to minimize gastric inflation in unprotected airways during resuscitation procedures. Methods: Ventilation of an airway simulator by use of a hose extended mask with leak and without leak and with or without additional oxygen (15 litres per minute). Experimental settings with artificial lung at a compliance = 300ml/ kPa and resistance = 0,5...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to analyze our experience with management of intrathoracic anastomotic leak after esophagectomy. METHODS Clinical data from 33 patients who developed intrathoracic anastomotic leak were evaluated retrospectively. These patients were selected from 1867 patients undergoing resection carcinoma of the esophagus and reconstruction between January 2003 and Decem...

BACKGROUND Results of studies to predict prolonged air leak (PAL; air leak longer than 5 days) after pulmonary lobectomy have been inconsistent and are of limited use. We developed a new scale representing the amount of early postoperative air leak and determined its correlation with air leak duration and its potential as a predictor of PAL. METHODS We grade postoperative air leak using a 5-g...

Marking menus have many benefits, including fast selection time, low error rate and fast transition to expert mode, but these are mitigated by a practical limit of 8 items per menu. Adding hierarchical levels increases capacity, but at the expense of longer selection times and higher error rates. In this paper we introduce Extended Marking Menus, a variant of marking menus that increases their ...