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Results for “Intelligent agents”

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At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1984

Local anesthetics in dental practice.

Local anesthetics are the most widely used drugs in dentistry today. Knowledge of the pharmacology and toxicology of these agents will result in their intelligent and judicious use. The choice of local anesthetic should be individualized for each patient. The duration of the dental procedure should be weighed against the duration of action of the local anesthetic; a decision should be made as to whether a vasoconstrictor is needed to prolong its action. However, if the duration of numbness is too long, the possibility of self-mutilation must be considered in certain patients (for example, children and the mentally retarded). In other patients with whom postoperative pain is expected, it may be beneficial to administer a long-acting local anesthetic such as bupivacaine for control of postoperative pain. The total dose of local anesthetic and vasoconstrictor must be determined for each patient based upon body weight; the maximal dosages for each agent should be known. Small children or frail individuals will require below average dosages. The use of a vasoconstrictor may constitute the limiting factor to the total number of local anesthetic cartridges that can be administered safely over a given period of time. Certain medical problems, such as cardiovascular system impairments or hyperthyroidism, may influence the choice of anesthetic and the quantity of vasoconstrictor. An understanding of the physicochemical properties of local anesthetics is also important to a rational process of selection. There are several causes for failure to achieve profound regional anesthesia. These include inflammation and/or infection, anatomic variation, intravascular injection, accessory innervation, and deflection of the needle. Inflammation and infection reduce the efficacy of a local anesthetic by reducing its bioavailability. Local anesthetics with low pKa values (for instance, mepivacaine) are the most effective in this clinical situation. Other causes of inadequate regional anesthesia are primarily related to technique of administration and can be circumvented by the use of the periodontal ligament injection. A comprehensive review of this technique and its application has been presented by the Council on Dental Materials and Equipment of the American Dental Association. Occasionally, a clinician may be unsuccessful at achieving regional anesthesia despite these additional measures. Highly anxious dental patients or patients with a genuine tolerance to local anesthetics normally pose the most problems. Transitional block or threshold block phenomena should also be suspected in these situations.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Anesthesia, Dental↗
PubMedDate not supplied

New quinolones in the treatment of joint and bone infections.

New quinolones are promising agents for use in the treatment of bone and joint infections because of their broad spectrum of activity against staphylococcal strains as well as gram-negative bacteria. Their pharmacologic properties and their availability for oral administration make them the drugs of choice in the treatment of such chronic infections. Pefloxacin and ciprofloxacin are the principal quinolones that have been evaluated with respect to the treatment of bone and joint infections. In the literature cited the mean rates of bacteriologic and clinical response among patients treated with pefloxacin and ciprofloxacin were 87.6% and 73%, respectively, whereas failure of therapy were due to the persistence of the causative organisms (5% and 15% of the cases, respectively) or to the emergence of resistant mutant strains (15% and 12% of the cases, respectively). Development of resistance to the quinolones--especially in staphylococci, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Serratia, Enterobacter species, and Klebsiella pneumoniae--is a problem that can be reduced by the intelligent use of these potent agents in spite of the ease of their administration. Therapy that combines new quinolones with other antibiotics should prevent the emergence of resistant mutants, but this hypothesis has to be assessed in large studies.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Genetic algorithm in the control optimization.

Genetic algorithm (GA) represents an exploratory search mathematical technique, which uses statistical methods of selection. They are named blind search technique as they usually operate without knowledge of the task domain. GA is inspired from the evolutionary features of biological systems. The natural individual selection of offspring that are better adapted will resist in time (3). The pioneer worker in this field was John Holland and the University of Michigan staff from 1975. The beginning study was in natural adaptive process explanation and continues with computed artificial systems developing that exploit the evolution natural principles. A GA technique was applied for a controller parameter optimization that regulates the mean blood pressure. The intelligent system adjusts the anesthetic agent in order to maintain the pressure constant with small variations from a desired set value. This is usually necessary for anesthesia control (mathematical model from 11, 12). Such a system was developed and tested using computer simulations. This paper describes some aspects about the GA mathematical method and finally the results of the controller implementation are presented.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1998

Soaps and detergents: understanding their composition and effect.

Soaps have been used for thousands of years as part of religious ceremonies and daily life. Derived from fatty acids or triglycerides (fats or oils) into their alkali derivatives through a process called saponification, soaps are important for healthcare professionals in preventing the spread of disease. Partly due to their alkaline nature, soaps are limited by their irritancy to the skin and their tendency to form insoluble and inactive salts when combined with either hard water or sea water. Therefore, soap alternatives or synthetic detergents have been developed. Detergents are classified into four groups: anionic, cationic, amphoteric, and non-ionic. These four groups are based on the hydrophilic qualities and surfactants they possess. Each group has characteristics that pertain to its main uses, irritancy, and toxicity. Understanding soaps and detergents may assist clinicians in making intelligent choices when using these agents on their patients as either skin cleansers or wound cleansers. Understanding the characteristics of soaps and detergents is especially important when dealing with at-risk patients such as the elderly.

Bacterial Infections↗
PubMed1997

Agency, communion, and achievement motivation.

This study examined the relationship among (1) two aspects of college students' self-concept--the degree to which they reported an agentic or communion orientation, (2) two views of intelligence they might hold--entity and incremental, and (3) students' tendencies to report adopting attitudes and behaviors consistent with a mastery or learned-helpless orientation. Results from a survey of a sample of 306 Introductory Psychology students indicate that: (1) an incremental view of intelligence was associated with the adoption of mastery-oriented achievement attitudes and behaviors, while an entity view of intelligence was associated with the adoption of learned-helpless attitudes and behaviors; (2) both agentic and communion orientations were associated with a mastery orientation; (3) an agentic orientation was also associated with lower levels of learned-helpless attitudes and behaviors while a communion orientation was associated with higher levels of learned-helpless attitudes and behaviors; and (4) patterns in the correlation between agency and communion, on the one hand, and several indices of students' self-confidence in academic arenas, on the other, further supported this asymmetry in the role agency and communion orientations appear to play in determining college students' adjustment to academic challenges.

Achievement↗
PubMed2000

Bioterrorism: agents of concern.

The intentional dispersal of biological agents by terrorists is a potential problem that increasingly concerns the intelligence, law enforcement, medical, and public health communities. Terrorists might choose biological agents over conventional and chemical weapons for multiple reasons, although it is difficult to predict, with certainty, which biological agents might prove attractive to terrorists. One can more confidently, however, derive a list of those few agents which, if used, would be of greatest public health consequence. It is these agents which will require the most robust countermeasures. We discuss the derivation of this short list of agents and the specific diseases involved.

Biological Warfare↗
PubMed2000

Short form of the WAIS-III for use with patients with schizophrenia.

The recent publication of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III), the most widely used standard test of intelligence, requires the development of a new short form for use with patients with schizophrenia for many clinical and research purposes. We used regression analyses of complete WAIS-III data on 41 outpatients with schizophrenia and 41 education-, and age-matched healthy subjects to determine the best combination of subtests to use as a short form. Excluding three subtests that are time-consuming to administer, and requiring that the solution includes one subtest from each of the four WAIS index scores, the combination that most fully accounted for the variance in full-scale IQ (FSIQ) for both participants with schizophrenia (R(2)=0.90) and healthy controls (R(2)=0.86) included the information, block design, arithmetic, and digit symbol subtests. When the restrictions regarding which subtests could enter were relaxed, the best four-subtest solution included information, block design, comprehension, and similarities. Although the latter explained 95% of the variance in FSIQ for schizophrenia participants and 90% of the variance for healthy controls, it consistently overestimated FSIQ for the schizophrenia group. We recommend the four-factor short form for use in future research and clinical practice in which a quick, accurate IQ estimate is desired.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Clinical value of sensitivity determinations in treating urinary tract infections.

The results of bacterial susceptibility testing in 2,413 urine specimens obtained from patients with urinary tract infections indicated that in a high percentage clinical response could be predicted without the need for antimicrobial sensitivity testing. Simply identifying the infecting organism will provide the clinician with enough information to treat most urinary tract infections intelligently. The relative effectiveness of antimicrobial agents to enable the proper selection of therapy in patients with urinary tract infections is discussed.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗
PubMed1978

Functional implications of changes in the senescent brain: a review.

The morphological, chemical, and physiological changes in the brain accompanying old age are reviewed. The deterioration of the striatal and hypothalamic dopaminergic systems were implicated in the onset of age related Parkinsonian-like slowing of performance and altered affect. Cholinergic hippocampal and neocortical systems were chemically and physiologically abnormal in the aged. The implications for slowed cognitive processing and persistance of the memory trace are presented.

Acetylcholine↗
PubMed1984

Limitations of long term use of antiparkinson drugs.

Effective control of parkinsonian symptoms can be achieved in a substantial number of patients by the judicious use of dopaminergic agents. To a considerable extent these drugs produce optimal therapeutic effects during the first 3-5 years of their use. Subsequently, efficacy diminishes with reemergence of parkinsonian symptoms as well as a number of untoward responses. The nature, frequency and mechanisms underlying the limitations of long term use of presently available anti-parkinson agents are discussed in this presentation.

Antiparkinson Agents↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Structure-activity relationships for skin sensitization potential: development of structural alerts for use in knowledge-based toxicity prediction systems.

The development of qualitative structure-activity relationships for the prediction of skin sensitization potential, based on structural alerts (substructures associated with a toxicological mechanism), and suitable for incorporation as rules into a knowledge-based system is described. The structure dependence of the skin sensitization mechanism may be largely defined in terms of the presence or metabolic/nonmetabolic formation of protein reactive functional groups on the test compound and by the physicochemical requirements of significant skin penetration. The proposed structural alerts were tested on a data set of diverse chemicals. The results showed that the alerts have potential as preliminary indicators of skin sensitization potential for a wide range of low molecular weight chemicals.

Acylation↗
PubMed1996

Computer-guided randomized concentration-controlled trials of tacrolimus in autoimmunity: multiple sclerosis and primary biliary cirrhosis.

A randomized concentration-controlled clinical trial (RCCCT) is a trial design in which patients are randomized to predefined blood drug concentrations (low, medium, high). If the concentration ranges are sufficiently separated, this study design can reveal important blood concentration-response relations. Tacrolimus is a potent yet "infant" immunosuppressant for the treatment and prevention of graft rejection and has been shown to exhibit significant clinical activity in some immune-mediated disorders. A tacrolimus artificial intelligence modeling system (AIMS) was used to guide patient dosing to achieve target concentrations specified by the study protocols. In the Multiple Sclerosis study group, we were able to define a concentration range (0.3-0.7 ng/ml) that appeared to show efficacy and minimal tacrolimus toxicity. Patients randomized to the high zone (0.6-1.2 ng/ml) in the Primary Biliary Cirrhosis study group showed significant reduction (approximately 50%) in surrogate efficacy markers [aspartate aminotransferase (SGOT), alanine aminotransferase (SGPT)] compared with patients in the low zone (0.1-0.6 ng/ml). Therefore the RCCCT allowed the detection and delineation of clinically significant concentration-response relations in an ethical and efficient manner.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed1978

The high-risk cardiac patient undergoing general surgery.

The challenge of the high-risk cardiac patient undergoing general surgery will be met only when an aggressive approach is taken to avoid an unfavourable balance between the oxygen supply and demand of the myocardium. In the past this challenge has been accepted in the operating room but postoperative care has been less than adequate. The intelligent use of potent, effective pharmacologic agents and intensive monitoring of myocardial performance intra- and postoperatively have greatly reduced morbidity and mortality in patients with ischemic heart disease undergoing aortocoronary bypass procedures; they can achieve similar results in such patients who must undergo general surgery.

Anesthesia, General↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Review and update of neuromuscular blocking agents.

The patient arriving in the PACU or ICU following surgery requires vigilant and intelligent nursing care. The postanesthesia nurse or critical care nurse with an understanding of the neuromuscular blocking agents used in anesthesia care is best prepared to observe, evaluate, and care for this patient.

Critical Care↗
PubMed2026

Beyond antibiotics: artificial intelligence-enabled anti-infective ecosystems for next-generation precision therapeutics against antimicrobial resistance.

The rapid global expansion of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens to undermine decades of progress in infectious disease management and highlights the limitations of conventional antibiotic-centered therapeutic strategies. Although emerging technologies-including antimicrobial peptides, bacteriophage therapy, CRISPR-based antimicrobials, microbiome therapeutics, anti-virulence approaches, nanotechnology-enabled drug delivery, and artificial intelligence (AI)-have individually demonstrated considerable promise, they are predominantly being developed as independent interventions rather than as coordinated components of an integrated therapeutic strategy. This Perspective proposes the Intelligent Anti-Infective Ecosystem (IAIE) as a conceptual systems-level framework that computationally integrates multimodal diagnostics, pathogen genomics, microbiome profiling, AI-assisted decision support, programmable precision therapeutics, ecological monitoring, and longitudinal clinical feedback within a continuously learning dynamically optimized workflow. Unlike existing paradigms that primarily optimize individual technologies or therapeutic decisions, IAIE emphasizes closed-loop coordination among complementary antimicrobial approaches to support precision-guided infection management while preserving microbiome integrity and mitigating resistance selection pressure. We further outline the core components, operational principles, translational challenges, and technology readiness of the major therapeutic platforms that could contribute to such an ecosystem, while distinguishing clinically established interventions from emerging experimental strategies. Importantly, IAIE should be interpreted as a prospective conceptual architecture rather than an existing clinical platform. Its proposed clinical value remains to be established through sequential computational, preclinical, and prospective clinical investigations using standardized microbiological, ecological, and patient-centered outcome measures. By framing antimicrobial innovation within an responsive systems perspective, IAIE provides a roadmap for future multidisciplinary research aimed at integrating artificial intelligence and systems microbiology to enable sustainable management of antimicrobial resistance.

Humans↗