Results There were 37 patients with JRA (33 girls and 4 boys, with a mean age of 12.31 ± 3.29 years) and 20 healthy controls (matched for age and sex ratio with JRA patients) were consecutively recruited in this study between 2005 and 2007. BMD of the calcaneus in the patients with JRA was significantly lower than that in healthy controls ((0.71 ± 0.13) g/cm^2 vs (0.97 ± 0.18) g/cm^2, P < 0.05)...

Three age- and sex-matched groups of 30 patients with chronic plaque psoriasis were treated by photochemotherapy (PUVA). Groups I and II received routine maintenance PUVA therapy at different intervals and Group III had no maintenance treatment. The remission time after the clearance treatment with PUVA is compared with the total cumulative dose of long wave ultraviolet light (UVA). A lower mea...

Over the past several years, the cancer risks associated with radiation from diagnostic imaging have received increased attention in both the medical literature and the lay press. In the midst of this heightened scrutiny, there has been growing support for the idea of tracking cumulative dose estimates that longitudinally document the accumulated medical radiation exposure of each individual pa...

OBJECTIVE To determine the incidence of withdrawal syndrome after prolonged infusion of fentanyl and midazolam in children, and the associated risk factors. DESIGN Historic or retrospective cohort study. SETTING Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in an academic center. PATIENTS Forty-eight pediatric patients who received sedation and analgesia only with fentanyl and midazolam through continuou...

BACKGROUND Biphasic waveform shocks are more effective than monophasic shocks for transchest ventricular defibrillation, atrial cardioversion, and defibrillation with implantable defibrillators but have not been studied for open chest, intraoperative defibrillation. This prospective, blinded, randomized clinical study compares biphasic and monophasic shock effectiveness and establishes intraope...

We review several issues of broad relevance to the interpretation of epidemiologic evidence concerning the toxicity of lead in adults, particularly regarding cognitive function and the cardiovascular system, which are the subjects of two systematic reviews that are also part of this mini-monograph. Chief among the recent developments in methodologic advances has been the refinement of concepts ...

BACKGROUND The purpose of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of deformable image registration (DIR) in assessing cumulative dose distributions of the combination of external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) and fractionated intracavitary brachytherapy (ICBT) for cervical cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS Three-dimensional image data sets of five consecutive patients were used. The treatment plan c...

Radiation therapy plans are optimized as a single treatment plan, but delivered over 30 50 treatment sessions (known as fractions). This paper proposes a new mixed-integer linear programming model to simultaneously incorporate fractionation and cumulative constraints in Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) planning optimization used in cancer treatment. The method is compared against a ...

HIV-infected patients exposed to antiretroviral therapy (ART) have an increased risk for hyperlipidemia and cardiovascular disease. We performed a longitudinal, comprehensive, and population-based study to investigate the cumulative effect of different types of ART regimens on hyperlipidemia risk in the Taiwanese HIV/ART cohort. A total of 13,370 HIV-infected patients (2,674 hyperlipidemia and ...