BioMed research international
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Median nerve to biceps nerve transfer in the arm has been reported only in adults. The following paper reports on 10 cases of this transfer in obstetric brachial plexus palsy. ⋯ Following the nerve transfer, nine children recovered elbow flexion (a score of 6 in one child and a score of 7 in eight children by the Toronto scale). The remaining child did not recover elbow flexion.
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For the purpose of successfully developing a prosthetic control system, many attempts have been made to improve the classification accuracy of surface electromyographic (SEMG) signals. Nevertheless, the effective feature extraction is still a paramount challenge for the classification of SEMG signals. The relative frequency band energy (RFBE) method based on wavelet packet decomposition was proposed for the prosthetic pattern recognition of multichannel SEMG signals. ⋯ Lastly, the support vector machine (SVM) was applied for the classification of SEMG signals. Our results demonstrated that the RFBE approach was suitable for identifying different types of forearm movements. By comparing with other classification methods, the proposed method achieved higher classification accuracy in terms of the classification of SEMG signals.
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Interruptions in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) compromise defibrillation success. However, CPR must be interrupted to analyze the rhythm because although current methods for rhythm analysis during CPR have high sensitivity for shockable rhythms, the specificity for nonshockable rhythms is still too low. This paper introduces a new approach to rhythm analysis during CPR that combines two strategies: a state-of-the-art CPR artifact suppression filter and a shock advice algorithm (SAA) designed to optimally classify the filtered signal. ⋯ The segments were split into a training and a test set. For the test set, the sensitivity and specificity for rhythm analysis during CPR were 91.0% and 96.6%, respectively. This new approach shows an important increase in specificity without compromising the sensitivity when compared to previous studies.
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Data on long-term outcomes of elderly (≥65 years) patients in ICU are sparse. ⋯ Following discharge, elderly ICU patients have higher mortality compared to the nonelderly and general population. In the elderly group, prior RRT and malignancy contribute additionally to in-hospital mortality risk. In the long-term, comorbidities (age-related), anemia, airway disease, and malignancy were significantly associated with mortality.
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Acne vulgaris is the most common cutaneous disorder affecting adolescents and young adults. Some studies have reported an association between serum zinc levels and acne vulgaris. We aimed to evaluate the serum zinc level in patients with acne vulgaris and compare it with healthy controls. ⋯ There was a correlation between serum zinc levels with severity and type of acne lesions. The results of our study suggest that zinc levels may be related to the severity and type of acne lesions in patients with acne vulgaris. Relative decrease of serum zinc level in acne patients suggests a role for zinc in the pathogenesis of acne vulgaris.