J Formos Med Assoc
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The percentage of female medical students has been significant elevating worldwide. The demographic shift is expected to influence the proportion of male versus female surgeons soon. The objective of this study was to evaluate the gender differences in the acquisition of robotic suturing skills. ⋯ Female medical students performed better in the VR task of suture spongy and achieved more stitches than male students with the da Vinci system despite no difference in robotic suture quality by gender. Because this is the first study comparing gender performance on a robotic platform, further studies are required to investigate if different training approaches will affect the performance by gender.
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Variable effects of beta-blockers (BB) and/or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) were reported to retard aortic root growth in Marfan syndrome (MFS). This study aimed to compare the effects of BB therapy and ARB-related therapies on cardiovascular protection in MFS. ⋯ For cardiovascular protection in MFS, only-ARB therapy is not inferior to only-BB therapy. Moreover, the outcomes of ARB-plus-BB therapy seemed to be favourable to those of only-BB therapy.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Perceived pain for orthodontic patients with conventional brackets or self-ligating brackets over 1 month period: A single-center, randomized controlled clinical trial.
The objective of this 2-arm parallel trial was to test the superiority of self-ligating brackets (SLB) over conventional brackets (CB) in terms of perceived pain for orthodontic patients. ⋯ The results of this study indicated no evidence that the pain intensity differs between CB and SLB at 4 h, 24 h, 3 days, 1 week and 1 month.
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This study sought to elucidate the mechanism by which losartan inhibits blood pressure (BP) elevation in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). ⋯ The study results showed that the reduction of BP elevation by losartan in SHRs occurs through the suppression of LARG expression and MYPT-1 phosphorylation in vascular smooth muscle cells.
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The application of non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC) reduces the risk of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) in comparison with vitamin K antagonist (VKA). However, the features and outcomes of NOAC-associated ICH are still unclear, especially for Asian populations. ⋯ There were no significant differences in initial ICH volume, 90-day mortality, or functional outcomes between NOAC and VKA-associated ICH in Asians.