In the historical evolution of thoracoscopy, which was initiated exactly one century ago by Hans Christian Jacobaeus, two distinct periods can be identified: one between 1910 and 1955, characterised by its use for the lysis of pleural adhesions to obtain therapeutic pneumothorax in lung tuberculosis, and the subsequent period which has seen the development of diagnostic applications, principall...

Video-assisted thoracic surgery has been recognized as an acceptable technique for the treatment of early-stage lung cancer, with the potential advantage of lower postoperative pain than that experienced after open thoracotomy. However, the procedure cannot completely alleviate postoperative pain and paraesthesia and causes some degree of intercostal nerve damage. To minimize postoperative pain...

Studies of clinical reasoning are essential if we are to extend our knowledge of occupational therapy practice, better communicate our work to clients and colleagues, and reveal to our students the nuances of therapy that cannot be gained from texts. However, accessing therapists' clinical reasoning is not an easy task because these cognitive processes can be studied only indirectly. The aim of...

BACKGROUND Since mid 1990s video-assisted breast surgery (VABS) has been developed in the treatment of benign and malignant breast diseases. According to studies that are conducted mainly in Japan, this tehnique is safe, easy to learn and his main advantage is excellent cosmetic results on postoperative appearance of breasts that cannot be achived with standard surgical procedures. OBJECTIVE ...

Cardiac resynchronization therapy is known to reduce morbidity and mortality in patients with advanced heart failure as a result of dyssynchrony and systolic dysfunction of the left ventricle. Placement of the left ventricular (LV) lead via the coronary sinus can be difficult. When LV lead implantation is difficult, a video-assisted epicardial approach can be a good alternative. Although there ...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To investigate the efficacy of video-assisted thoracoscopic sterilization to treat patients with exacerbation of chronic empyema thoracis. DESIGN Case reports and literature review. SETTING Academic department of surgery. PATIENTS Two elderly, debilitated patients with worsening, chronic empyema thoracis as diagnosed by radiographs, CT, and thoracentesis. Both patients had...

The current work focuses on the design and implementation of an indoor surveillance application for long-term automated analysis of human activity, in a video-assisted biomedical monitoring system. Video processing is necessary to overcome noise-related problems, caused by suboptimal video capturing conditions, due to poor lighting or even complete darkness during overnight recordings. Modified...

—In this paper, aiming to improve the quality of video transmission while satisfying the delay Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, we propose an efficient cross-layer assisted video transmission scheme by jointly considering the video coding rate and the available power resource. We jointly analyze the effects on the performance of video transmission from video coding rate at the applicatio...

BACKGROUND Internal drainage of giant pancreatic pseudocysts secondary to acute pancreatitis is frequently complicated with postoperative retroperitoneal infection and hemorrhage. Recent data suggest that the risk factor is unrecognized pancreatic necrosis; presumably, pancreatic necrosis becomes infected with bacteria introduced by the cystoenteric anastomosis. HYPOTHESIS Video-assisted panc...