Biomedizinische Technik. Biomedical engineering
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The proper setting of support ventilation aims to follow the patients' demands, ensuring adequate assistance to their respiratory effort. Effort assessment is thus necessary. But invasive procedures like measuring transdiaphragmatic pressure (Pdi) are impractical in long-term ventilation. ⋯ For the validation of O+D, its estimations were compared to the results from invasive measurement of Pdi using balloon catheters. The agreement between PTPinsp from the invasive measurement and the proposed alternative was confirmed by regression analysis (PTP(O+D)=1.13PTP(Pdi)- 0.85, R²=0.84) and calculation of their differences (mean±SD=1.78±7.18 cm H2O s). Repeated execution of the non-invasive O+D method facilitates a safe automatic assessment of respiratory mechanics and breathing effort, promoting the rapid recognition of changes in patient's demands and the adaptation of support.
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German emergency medical services (EMS) face the challenge of ensuring high-quality emergency care against a background of continuously increasing numbers of emergency missions, resource shortages concomitant with greatly increased arrival times, particularly in rural areas. Because German EMS physicians are at maximum capacity, an immediate response is not always possible, and thus delays in commencing advanced life support measures sometimes occur. In such scenarios, paramedics start the initial treatment until the EMS physician arrives. ⋯ Therefore, the project Telemedical Rescue Assistance System (TemRas) has developed an innovative concept to improve quality of emergency care. The objective is to introduce so-called tele-EMS physicians providing remote medical support for the emergency team on site by transmitting audio and video data as well as vital signs and 12-lead-ECG from the emergency site to a teleconsultation center. In this article, the development process as well as the first results of the evaluation phase and the impact for further use of telemedicine in EMS are presented.
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Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Evaluation of the clinical practicability of intraoperative optical imaging comparing three different camera setups.
Intraoperative optical imaging (IOI) is a method to visualize functional activated brain areas during brain surgery using a camera system connected to a standard operating microscope. Three different high-resolution camera systems (Hamamatsu EB-CCD C7190-13W, Hamamatsu C4742-96-12G04, and Zeiss AxioCam MRm) have been evaluated for suitability to detect activated brain areas by detecting stimulation-dependent blood volume changes in the somatosensory cerebral cortex after median nerve stimulation. The image quality of the camera systems was evaluated in 14 patients with tumors around the somatosensory cortex. ⋯ The technique was found to be very sensitive, and several negative influencing factors were identified. However, all possible artifacts seem to be controllable in the majority of the cases, and the IOI method could be well adapted for routine clinical use. Nevertheless, further systematic studies are needed to demonstrate the reliability and validity of the method.
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A demonstrator system for planning neurosurgical procedures was developed based on commercial hardware and software. The system combines an easy-to-use environment for surgical planning with high-end visualization and the opportunity to analyze data sets for research purposes. The demonstrator system is based on the software AMIRA. ⋯ A Spaceball device allows a comfortable, intuitive way of navigation in the data sets. Via an interface to a neurosurgical navigation system, the demonstrator system can be used intraoperatively. The precision, applicability, and benefit of the demonstrator system for planning of neurosurgical interventions and for neurosurgical research were successfully evaluated by neurosurgeons using phantom and patient data sets.