BACKGROUND Determine the effect of the day 1 urinary excretion of cadmium (D1-UE-Cd) on mortality of patients admitted to a coronary care unit (CCU). METHODS A total of 323 patients were enrolled in this 6-month study. Urine and blood samples were taken within 24 h after CCU admission. Demographic data, clinical diagnoses, and hospital mortality were recorded. The scores of established system...

OBJECTIVE To identify the effect on door to needle (DTN) time of moving the site of thrombolysis delivery from the coronary care unit (CCU) to the emergency department (ED). To ascertain if moving the site of thrombolysis enables appropriate use of thrombolysis. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING CCU and ED of a 450 bed Scottish district general hospital without on-site primary angiop...

BACKGROUND Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is considered to be an important cause of infection-related death and morbidity in intensive care units (ICUs). We sought to determine the long-term effect of an educational program to prevent VAP in a medical ICU (MICU). METHODS A 4-year controlled, prospective, quasi-experimental study was conducted in an MICU, surgical ICU (SICU), and corona...

OBJECTIVE To analyse the effect on outcome of referral to specialist facilities after cardiopulmonary arrest in a general ward. METHODS A retrospective analysis of resuscitation records of 743 patients in whom cardiopulmonary resuscitation was performed in a general ward between 1988 and 1992. After successful initial cardiopulmonary resuscitation, patients were identified as transferred to c...

Lately, the technical research on carbon dioxide capture and utilization (CCU) has achieved important breakthroughs. While single CO2-based innovations are entering the markets, the possible economic effects of a large-scale CO2 utilization still remain unclear to policy makers and the public. Hence, this paper reviews the literature on CCU and provides insights on the motivations and potential...

The use of a buffer system based on N-[2-hydroxyethyl]piperazine-N'-[2-ethanesulfonic acid] (HEPES), in conjunction with standard Gourlay's culture medium was investigated for the growth and maintenance of Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. mycoides SC vaccine strain T(1)44. When the initial pH of the culture medium was adjusted to 8.0, 0.075 M HEPES-NaOH was found to be sufficient to prevent the pH fa...

BACKGROUND Nurses tend to wash their hands more often than physicians, and among nonhealth care workers, women tend to wash their hands more often than men. This study examined the influence of gender on the handwashing rates of health care workers (HCWs). The null hypotheses were that there would be no intergender difference in (a) handwashing rates in HCWs across professions and (b) within pr...

BACKGROUND There is currently no effective preoperative assessment for patients undergoing kidney transplantation that is able to identify those at high perioperative risk requiring admission to critical care unit (CCU). We sought to determine if functional measures of cardiovascular reserve, in particular the anaerobic threshold (VO₂AT) could identify these patients. METHODS Adult patients w...

ABSTRACT A cooling coil unit (CCU) is nonlinear in nature. Existing CCU models for control and optimization are either linear approximations around working point or very complex nonlinear ones, resulting in difficulties for real time applications. Therefore, a simple yet accurate CCU engineering model is very important to obtain a better performance for Heating, Ventilating, and Air-Conditionin...