Background: Postoperative hypoxemia is common complication in early postoperative period. Upper abdominal surgery significantly impairs the respiratory mechanics for ventilation resulting in hypoxemia. Aim and Objectives: To observe the incidence, severity and duration of early postoperative hypoxemia in adults undergoing elective upper and lower abdominal surgeries. Material and Methods: This ...

[Purpose] This study was designed to compare and clarify the relationship between expiratory rib cage compression and expiratory abdominal compression in patients on prolonged mechanical ventilation, with a focus on tidal volume. [Subjects and Methods] The subjects were 18 patients on prolonged mechanical ventilation, who had undergone tracheostomy. Each patient received expiratory rib cage com...

Rating systems not only provide information to users but also motivate the rated agent. This paper solves for the optimal (effort-maximizing) rating system within the standard career concerns framework. It is a mixture two-state rating system. That is, it is the sum of two Markov processes, with one that reflects the belief of the rater and the other the preferences of the rated agent. The rati...

There have been considerable advances in our understanding of the anatomical substrates, neural connections and modulation of the mammalian respiratory central pattern generator (CPG). Despite these advances, however, relatively little is known about the regulation of CPGs for breathing in other vertebrates. It has been proposed that CPGs supporting a variety of motor behaviors such as breathin...

A 42-year-old patient without notable history, the victim of a highway accident (pedestrian struck by a truck). Admitted to the emergency for severe chest trauma; on admission, the patient was conscious, polypneic, with abdominal breathing, hemodynamically stable. After setting condition, a chest radiograph performed showed left rib fractures with a dissociated fragment from the chest wall, a l...

With the use of current multislice techniques for MR cholangiopancreatography various upper abdominal pathologies including pancreatic carcinoma, Klatskin tumor and metastatic spread can be non invasively depicted. Respiratory gating allows free breathing of the patient, which increases patient comfort, while excellent image quality can be achieved. In this concise pictorial report, state of th...

The extent to which self-hypnosis can be used in surgical procedures is a topic of controversy. This author considers the limits imposed, by the literature, on the effectiveness of self-hypnosis in major abdominal surgery to be academic and unfounded. This is an account of a cholecystectomy performed using self-hypnosis as the sole anesthetic agent. Muscle relaxation, shallow breathing, pulse r...

Locomotor-respiratory coupling (LRC), phase-locking between breathing and stepping rhythms, occurs in many vertebrates. When quadrupedal mammals gallop, 1∶1 stride per breath coupling is necessitated by pronounced mechanical interactions between locomotion and ventilation. Humans show more flexibility in breathing patterns during locomotion, using LRC ratios of 2∶1, 2.5∶1, 3∶1, or 4∶1 and somet...

[Purpose] Continuous electrical stimulation of abdominal wall muscles is known to induce mild muscle fatigue. However, it is not clear whether this is also true for functional electrical stimulation delivered only during the expiratory phase of breathing. This study aimed to examine whether or not intermittent electrical stimulation delivered to abdominal wall muscles induces muscle fatigue. [S...