Obese subjects have a high prevalence of left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy. It is unclear to what extent LV hypertrophy results directly from obesity or from associated conditions, such as hypertension, impaired glucose homeostasis, or obstructive sleep apnea. We tested the hypothesis that LV hypertrophy in severe obesity is associated with additive effects from each of the major comorbidities....

OBJECTIVE To explore the feasibility and efficacy of Z-palatoplasty for the management of severe obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome in patients with tonsils. STUDY DESIGN Case series and chart review. SETTING University hospital. METHODS Z-palatoplasty and coblation channeling of the tongue were performed in 36 patients with body mass index <40 kg/m(2) and size 1 or 2 tonsils. All ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effect of prone and supine positions on breathing pattern variables, thoracoabdominal motion and peripheral oxygen saturation of hemoglobin of premature newborn infants recovering from respiratory distress syndrome, while breathing spontaneously and in rapid eye movement sleep. METHODS This was a quasi-experimental study. Twelve preterms weighing > 1,000 g at enrollmen...

Objective. To quantify the effectiveness of nasal expiratory positive airway pressure (nasal EPAP) devices or Provent as treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Methods. PubMed and six other databases were searched through November 15, 2015, without language limitations. Results. Eighteen studies (920 patients) were included. Pre- and post-nasal EPAP means ± standard deviations (M ± SD) fo...

Although adaptive servo-ventilation (ASV) therapy is considered clinically beneficial to patients with heart failure (HF), a large proportion of patients fail to show improvement in HF. We aimed to identify reliable markers indicative of a favorable response to ASV. We evaluated 103 consecutive patients with New York Heart Association (NYHA) class II–IV HF who were scheduled for ASV therapy for...

Membrane scaling during the treatment of aqueous solutions containing sparingly soluble salts by direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) was investigated. The results reveal that membrane scaling caused by CaSO4 was more severe than that by CaCO3 or silicate. However, under the experimental condition used in this study and at feed and distillate temperature of 20 C and 40 C, respectively, C...

BACKGROUND In this observational study near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was evaluated as a non-invasive monitor of impaired tissue oxygenation (StO2) after cardiac surgery. StO2, cardiac output, mixed venous oxygen saturation and mean arterial pressure were compared with lactate clearance as established measure for sufficient tissue perfusion and oxygen metabolism. METHODS Forty patients aft...

This paper proposes a new algorithm method for detection and compensation of backlight images. The proposed technique attacks the weaknesses of conventional backlight image processing methods, such as over-saturation and diminished contrast. This proposed algorithm consists of two operational phases, the detection phase and the compensation phase. In the detection phase, we use the spatial posi...

The change in the refractive indices of salt solutions which results from the addition of 1 per cent of the “pseudoglobulins” of blood serum has been measured by Reiss.l His pseudoglobulins were prepared by fractional precipitation with ammoniun sulphate and purified by prolonged dialysis. Fraction I (Pseudoglobulin I) was precipitated at 32-36 per cent saturation with ammonium sulphate, fracti...