Affi liations: From the Chest Department, Taipei Veterans General Hospital. Financial/nonfi nancial disclosures: The authors have reported to CHEST that no potential confl icts of interest exist with any companies/organizations whose products or services may be discussed in this article. Correspondence to: Kun-Ta Chou, MD, Chest Department, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, No. 201, Section 2 S...

Introduction: Cardiac mapping is a broad term that covers several modes of mapping such as body surface,1 endocardial,2 and epicardial3 mapping. The recording and analysis of extracellular electrograms, reported as early as 1915, forms the basis for cardiac mapping.4 More commonly, cardiac mapping is performed with catheters that are introduced percutaneously into the heart chambers and sequent...

The conventional definition of reliability (and reliability engineering as discipline) suggests that reliability is a quantifiable performance requirement of a product or system. This means that reliability can be specified, designed for, predicted, measured and demonstrated, using applicable mathematical and statistical models. This paper argues against the futile and erroneous quantification ...

background: myocardial infarctions at different locations have been related to different sets of risk factors. this study was designed to examine the association between cardiovascular risk factors and specific coronary artery calcification (cac). methods: the study population comprised 573 postmenopausal women selected from a population-based cohort study. established vascular risk factors wer...

introduction: intensive care unit is one of the most stressful wards for patients and it is estimated that 30 to70 percent of patients experience severe physiologic stress during admission. some of the physiologic responses to stress include increase in metabolic rate with consequent increase in body temperature, increase in cardiac output and contraction power and subsequently increase in bloo...

introduction: melanin pigmentation in the oral mucosa occurs as a result of several reasons one of which is smoking. cigarette smoke induces numerous side effects in the people who do not smoke, but are in the same environment. the aim of this study was to evaluate the role of parental smoking on pigmentation of their children's oral mucosa. materials and methods: this study was carried out as ...

anesthesiology is one of the most important creations of the modern science, basically based on the anesthetic drugs; however, there are a few concerns regarding the effects of the anesthetic drugs. would there be any progress in the current trend of anesthesiology, both clinically and basically. there would be a possibility to use the physiologic mechanisms of sleep to be incorporated into cli...