Anxiety and phobia in dental procedures are common deterrents for patients visiting the dental care unit. For these individuals, procedural sedation may aid in completion of dental treatments. In most cases, the patients are conscious during sedation, thereby allowing spontaneous ventilation. Intravenous sedation (IVS) is widely used during dental treatment to relieve patient anxiety. IVS is th...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to estimate the accuracy of prenatal assessment of interventricular septum (IVS) thickness, right myocardial wall thickness (RMWT), and left myocardial wall thickness (LMWT) by two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound for the prediction of perinatal mortality and postnatal diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) among diabetic pregnant women. SUBJECTS AND MET...

We conducted a case-control study to investigate the association between PAR1 gene polymorphisms and the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A total of 270 patients with COPD and 270 control subjects were consecutively recruited between March 2012 and March 2014. A polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism assay was used to assess the polymorphi...

BACKGROUND We tested the hypothesis that right ventricular (RV) pressure overload affects RV function and further influences left ventricular (LV) geometry, which adversely affects LV twist mechanics and segmental function. METHODS AND RESULTS Echocardiographic images were prospectively acquired in 44 patients (age, 46+/-12 years; 82% women) with evidence of pulmonary hypertension (estimated ...

In the past few years, numerical weather models (NWM) have been investigated to improve mapping functions which are used for tropospheric delay modeling in VLBI and GPS data analyses. The Vienna Mapping Functions VMF are based on direct raytracing through NWM, and so they are able to exploit the full information provided in the NWM. On the other hand, the Isobaric Mapping Functions IMF are usin...

Instrumental variables regression (IV regression) is a method for making causal inferences about the effect of a treatment based on an observational study in which there are unmeasured confounding variables. The method requires one or more valid instrumental variables (IVs); a valid IV is a variable that is associated with the treatment, is independent of unmeasured confounding variables, and h...

BACKGROUND This study investigated the major clinical determinants of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) at ventricular insertion points (VIPs) commonly seen in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH). METHODS Forty-six consecutive PH patients (mean pulmonary artery pressure ≥25 mmHg at rest) and 21 matched controls were examined. Right ventricular (RV) morphology, function and LGE mass volu...