Over the past decade, there has been an increase in endoscopic procedures within the thorax for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Each has its indications, techniques and complications. However, the one common denominator is that there is always the possibility that thoracotomy may be necessary. Occasionally, particularly if considerable haemorrhage occurs, thoracotomy may be required immedi...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to develop a methodology to quantitatively measure the thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratio from a 4DCT dataset for breathing motion modeling and breathing motion studies. METHODS The thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratio was quantified by measuring the rate of cross-sectional volume increase throughout the thorax and abdomen as a function of tidal volume. Twent...

opioids are widely used for the treatment of malignant and non-malignant pains. these medications are accompanied by adverse effects, in particular gastrointestinal symptoms known as opioid bowel dysfunction (obd). the most common symptom of obd is refractory constipation that is usually stable regardless of the use of laxatives. narcotic bowel syndrome (nbs) is a subset of obd described as amb...