BACKGROUND In this randomized, double-blind study, the authors investigated the efficacy of continuous and patient-controlled ropivacaine infusions via an infraclavicular perineural catheter in ambulatory patients undergoing moderately painful orthopedic surgery at or distal to the elbow. METHODS Preoperatively, patients (n = 30) received an infraclavicular perineural catheter and nerve block...

Objectives. The efficacy of high dose furosemide as a continuous infusion was compared with a bolus injection of equal dose in patients with severe heart failure. Background. The delivery rate of furosemide into the nephron has been proved to be a determinant of diuretic efficacy in healthy volunteers. Methods. In a randomized crossover study we compared the efficacy of a continuous infusion of...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES It has been clearly demonstrated that abciximab is useful in percutaneous coronary interventions. However, it is not known if intracoronary administration of the initial abciximab bolus improves outcome. Moreover, there may be safety concerns. METHODS The study was a single-center prospective randomized trial that included all patients undergoing coronary angioplas...

In this paper, a new adaptive bolus-chasing control scheme is proposed to synchronize the bolus peak in a patient's vascular system and the imaging aperture of a computed tomography (CT) scanner. The proposed control scheme is theoretically evaluated and experimentally tested on a modified Siemens SOMATOM Volume Zoom CT scanner. The first set of experimental results are reported on bolus-chasin...

BACKGROUND Optimal continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) therapy emphasizes the relationship between insulin dose and carbohydrate consumption. One widely used tool (bolus calculator) requires the user to enter discrete carbohydrate values; however, many patients might not estimate carbohydrates accurately. This study assessed carbohydrate estimation accuracy in type 1 diabetes CSII u...

INTRODUCTION Postmastectomy radiation therapy (PMRT) has known deleterious side effects in immediate autologous breast reconstruction. However, plastic surgeons are rarely involved in PMRT planning. Our institution has adopted a custom bolus approach for all patients receiving PMRT. This offers uniform distribution of standard radiation doses, thereby minimizing radiation-induced changes while ...

A poor bolus injection results in an unsatisfactory quantitative radionuclide angiocardiogram in as many as 20% of children with possible, left-to-right (L-R) cardiac shunts. Deconvolution analysis was applied to similar studies in experimental animals to determine whether dependence on the input bolus could be minimized. Repeated good-bolus, prolonged (greater than 2.5 sec), or multiple-peak i...

It has been speculated that convective ventilatory inhomogeneities are an important factor influencing aerosol bolus behavior in the compromised lung. Multiple-breath 133Xe washout (MBWXe) is a commonly accepted test of ventilation distribution. By comparing aerosol bolus parameters to MBWXe in 9 healthy subjects and 14 cystic fibrosis patients with mild-to-moderate airway obstruction, we have ...

The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of using an ultrasound contrast agent test bolus to determine optimum bolus timing for three-dimensional (3D) gadolinium (Gd)-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). Small test doses of ultrasound contrast agent (0.3 ml Optison) were injected intravenously followed immediately by a 20 ml saline flush. Arrival of the contrast agen...