background: assisted reproductive technologies (arts) are complicated and stressful techniques and the social and cultural norms are major obstacles against their use. many qualitative studies have been done in the field of women's experiences of infertility, but less is known about the experiences of infertile women seeking assisted pregnancy. the aim of this study was to understand and descri...

BACKGROUND A bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide in the UK recently made significant progress in the British House of Lords and will be reintroduced in the future. Until now there has been little discussion of the clinical implications of physician-assisted suicide for the UK. This paper describes problematical issues that became apparent from a review of the medical and psychiatric lit...

OBJECTIVES To investigate effects of the limited two-port video assisted thoracic surgery on treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax. METHODS A retrospective analysis of 96 patients with spontaneous pneumothorax who underwent video assisted thoracic surgery was conducted in the present study, in which 23 cases underwent the limited two-port video assisted thoracic surgery while 73 cases treated...

OBJECTIVE Mechanical ventilation is associated with retained airway secretions. Manually assisted cough contributes to the displacement of bronchial mucus, whereas positive end-expiratory pressure increases collateral ventilation and maintains airway patency. This study aimed to assess the effects of manually assisted cough, either alone or added to increased positive end-expiratory pressure an...

Aim It was examined whether the single embryo transfer policy makes the treatment period longer for couples to achieve their first live birth by assisted reproductive technology. Methods This study retrospectively analyzed women who started assisted reproductive technology at younger than 40 years of age in the authors' organization. The treatment periods for couples to achieve the first live...

OBJECTIVES The use of technology to provide chronic pain self-management interventions has increased in the recent years. Individual studies have primarily focused on a single technology-assisted modality and direct comparisons of different technology-assisted modalities are rare. Thus, little is known about the relative strengths and weaknesses of each technology-assisted modality. MATERIALS...

OBJECTIVE The Medical Advisory Secretariat undertook a review of the evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of computer assisted hip and knee arthroplasty. The two computer assisted arthroplasty systems that are the topics of this review are (1) navigation and (2) robotic-assisted hip and knee arthroplasty. THE TECHNOLOGY Computer-assisted arthroplasty consists of navigation and...

as the world’s population continues to age, practitioners encounter increasing numbers of older patients with end-stage renal disease (esrd) who require renal replacement therapy (rrt). conservative management may be considered in older patients and has been shown to offer comparable survival rates and hospital-free days to rrt patients. at present, for those who choose rrt, hemodialysis is the...