BioMed research international
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Length of stay (LOS) in the intensive care unit (ICU) of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (sICH) patients is one of the most important issues. The disease severity, psychosocial factors, and institutional factors will influence the length of ICU stay. This study is used in the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) to define the threshold of a prolonged ICU stay in sICH patients. ⋯ This study showed that the threshold of a prolonged ICU stay is a good indicator of hospital utilization in ICH patients. Different hospitals have their own different care strategies that can be identified with a prolonged ICU stay. This indicator can be improved using quality control methods such as complications prevention and efficiency of ICU bed management. Patients' stay in ICUs and in hospitals will be shorter if integrated care systems are established.
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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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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.
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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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We introduce a rating tool that objectively evaluates the skills of surgical trainees performing cochlear implant surgery. ⋯ Our results indicate that the proposed assessment tool for cochlear implant surgery is reliable, accurate, and easy to use. This instrument can thus be used to provide objective feedback on overall and task-specific competency in cochlear implantation.