Medical & biological engineering & computing
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Med Biol Eng Comput · Feb 2010
Theoretical evaluation of a simple cooling pad for inducing hypothermia in the spinal cord following traumatic injury.
The Pennes bioheat equation and finite element method (FEM) are used to solve for the temperature distributions in the spinal cord and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) during 30 min of cooling for spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. The average CSF and spinal cord temperatures are reduced by 3.48 and 2.72 degrees C, respectively. The 100-mm wide pad provides the desired cooling and uses the least amount of material. ⋯ The temperature decrease in the spinal cord is more than doubled when the temperature at the back of the torso is lowered from 20 to 0 degrees C. Spinal cord ischemia, often observed after traumatic spinal cord injury, promotes cooling penetration. The proposed technique can reduce the spinal cord temperature by 2 degrees C within 30 min and may be a feasible treatment for traumatic SCI.
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Med Biol Eng Comput · Feb 2010
Increase in intrathoracic volume in pectus excavatum patients after the Nuss procedure.
In this study, we present finite element analysis models to calculate the increase in intrathoracic volume of pectus excavatum patients after the Nuss procedure. One virtue of our approach is that the measurement of the intrathoracic volume has no time difference and is not affected by postoperative pain, which cannot be achieved with a 2-year difference between pre- and postoperative pulmonary function testing or any other clinical method. ⋯ The increment curve was patient-dependent, although the increment behavior was similar among the six patients examined. The curve of the increase became flat when the elevating force exceeded 80 N or the displacement of the lower sternal end exceeded 2.6 cm in half of our cases.