Infrared imaging: making progress in fulfilling its medical promise.
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BACKGROUND: Within a short period of time, video assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) has revolutionised the practice of thoracic surgery. Most of the existing literature, however, is concentrated on the technical aspects. AIMS: We examined the impact of VATS on our practice and its implications. METHODS: We reviewed our thoracic case load two years before and two years after the introduction of VATS in our hospital. RESULTS: We have witnessed a rapid and progressive increase in our thoracic case load since the introduction of VATS. With increased experience, proportionally more cases were performed using VATS compared to conventional surgical access. The increased case load covered a wide range of thoracic diseases with the majority for spontaneous pneumothorax and pleural diseases. CONCLUSIONS: The higher case load is due to increased referrals which at least partly reflect earlier acceptance by both the patients and their physicians for surgical intervention. The changing indications for surgery and the high cost associated with VATS, however, could place extra demand on the healthcare, especially for some countries in Asia. Cost containment is therefore a high priority here. More research is greatly needed in this area.
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Efforts to make blood transfusion as safe as possible have focused on making the blood in the bag as disease-free as possible. The results have been dramatic, and the costs have been correspondingly high. Although blood services will have to continue to deal with emerging pathogens, efforts to reduce the transfusion of infectious agents presently posing a risk will require high incremental costs and result in only improvements of a small magnitude. The other aspect of safe blood transfusion, the actual transfusion process performed primarily in hospitals, has been accorded considerably less interest. We should turn our attention to enhancing overall blood safety by focusing on improving the process of blood transfusion. Errors involving patient, specimen, and blood product identification put transfused patients at risk, increasing the mortality risk for some. Solutions that could improve the transfusion process are discussed as a focus of this article.
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BACKGROUND: Teledermoscopy uses telecommunication technologies to transfer images of pigmented skin lesions via the Internet for teleconsultation. DESIGN: Clinical and dermoscopic images of 66 and 43 pigmented skin lesions achieved in two consecutive studies were sent by e-mail to dermatologists with different degrees of experience in dermoscopy for a telediagnosis. All lesions included in these studies were surgically excised and diagnosed histopathologically. RESULTS: The diagnostic concordance between the face-to-face diagnosis and the telediagnosis was 91% in the first study, whereas, in the second study, it varied from 76.7%-95.3%. The accuracy of the diagnoses in both studies was not related to the quality of the images, but did highly depend on the level of diagnostic difficulty of a given pigmented skin tumor and on the level of experience of each observer. CONCLUSIONS: Teleconsultation of dermoscopic images of pigmented skin lesions via e-mail provides a similar degree of diagnostic accuracy as face-to-face diagnosis when the diagnosis is made by a dermatologist confident with dermoscopy.
PURPOSE: To review and critique the debate concerning nursing and technology. Technology has been considered both at one and at odds with nursing. ORGANIZING CONSTRUCT: Mitcham's (1994) concepts of technological optimism and romanticism. SOURCE: Nursing literature since 1960. METHODS: Historical analysis. FINDINGS: Technological optimists in nursing have viewed technology as an extension of and as readily assimilable into humanistic nursing practice, and nursing as socially advantaged by technology. Technological romantics have viewed technology as irreconcilable with nursing culture, as an expression of masculine culture, and as recirculating existing gender and social inequalities. CONCLUSIONS: Both optimists and romantics essentialize technology and nursing, treating the two as singular and fixed entities. The (ir)reconcilability of nursing and technology may be a function of how devices are used by people in different contexts, or of the (ir)reconcilability of views of technology in nursing.
The purpose of this study is to identify the local availability and trends in local availability of imaging technology and interpretation services in rural hospitals in the northwestern United States during the period between 1991 to 1994. Another objective is to describe hospital and community factors associated with the diffusion of image production and interpretation services. The information for this study was gathered through telephone surveys of rural hospital administrators in eight northwestern states in 1991 and 1994. The availability of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment, computed tomography (CT) scanners, ultrasonography equipment, and dedicated mammography equipment increased between 1991 and 1994. The increases in MRI units were primarily in mobile equipment, while ultrasonography and mammography equipment increases were primarily fixed hospital-based units. In 1994, image interpretation in the rural hospitals was provided by both primary care and radiology physicians. Forty-six (11.5%) of the rural hospitals had no on-site radiology services and only 73 (18%) had daily radiology services. Between 1991 and 1994, 12 hospitals gained at least once-a-week radiology services, but 24 lost all radiology services. Teleradiology availability more than doubled during the three years. Radiology technology has diffused widely into rural communities in this region of the United States at differing rates for large and small hospitals. Radiologists are available to these hospitals only 46 percent of the days each year, with more days of availability in the larger hospitals and fewer days in the smaller hospitals. Teleradiology capability is increasing more rapidly in the larger hospitals that have radiologists more readily available.
Mitochondria play a central role to provide ATP for fertilization and preimplantation embryo development in the ooplasm. The mitochondrial dysfunction of oocyte has been proposed as one of the causes of high levels of developmental retardation and arrest that occur in preimplantation embryos generated using Assisted Reproductive Technology. Cytoplasmic transfer (CT) from a donor to a recipient oocyte has been applied to infertility due to dysfunctional ooplasm, with resulting pregnancies and births. However, neither the efficacy nor safety of this procedure has been appropriately investigated. In order to improve embryogenesis, we observed the mitochondrial distribution in ooplasma under the several conditions using mitochondrial GFP-transgenic mice (mtGFP-tg mice) in which the mitochondria are visualized by GFP. In this report, we will present our research about the mitochondrial distribution in ooplasm during early embryogenesis and the fate of injected donor mitochondria after CT using mtGFP-tg mice. The mitochondria in ooplasm from the germinal vesicle stage to the morula stage were accumulated in the perinuclear region. The mitochondria of the mtGFP-tg mouse oocyte transferred into the wild type mouse embryo could be observed until the blastocysts stage, suggesting that the mtGFP-tg mice oocyte is very useful for visual observation of the mitochondrial distribution in the oocyte, and that the aberrant early developmental competences due to the oocyte mitochondrial dysfunction may be overcome by transferring the "normal" mitochondria.
The surface and bulk modulation of polymeric biomedical devices allows the full range of material properties to be exercised as demanded by custom applications. Polymeric biomaterials are finding greater use as relatively inert and even transient options and so therefore will require thorough processing analyses and the transfer of technology from nonbiomedical applications to the biomedical industry.
Sealant application is a technic in which a rapid transfer of technology occurred from the research community, abetted by industry, to individual practitioners and public health personnel. Less than five years after publication of the results of the first clinical trial, sealant systems were commercially available. Since the first published report of the effectiveness of sealants in inhibiting occlusal caries, many other investigators have substantiated the dramatic caries-inhibiting potential and degree of retention that can be obtained with sealants. Despite the high degree of success and the universality of positive reports, there is a significant lag in the utilization of sealants both by dental practitioners and public health programs. One reason appears to be the perception that sealants are not cost-effective. This is a concept that the dental research community may have unwittingly fostered by conducting cost analyses on a technic that was still in its initial stages of development. It behooves the dental profession, both the public and private sectors, to accord sealants recognition for their proven effectiveness and retentive characteristics. At the same time, the dental profession should suspend judgment on their costs until reports of studies conducted specifically for this purpose appear.
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A worldwide initiative in structural genomics aims to capitalize on the recent successes of the genome projects. Substantial new investments in structural genomics in the past 2 years indicate the high level of support for these international efforts. Already, enormous progress has been made on high-throughput methodologies and technologies that will speed up macromolecular structure determinations. Recent international meetings have resulted in the formation of an International Structural Genomics Organization to formulate policy and foster cooperation between the public and private efforts.
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