Although the diagnosis of thymolipoma has improved with the introduction of computerized tomography (CT), variations in CT appearance are still being described; this paper describes a case which resembled a lipoma. The CT features of thymolipoma are discussed with special reference to the differential diagnosis. Surgical excision should be considered for patients who are found to exhibit a fatty intrathoracic mass on CT.
A J-shaped suction catheter was tailored to facilitate aspiration of the right upper lobe bronchus during rigid bronchoscopy in pediatric patients. This suction catheter was used successfully in three patients.
A 35 year old diabetic presented with features of septicaemia and developed cardiac tamponade. He was found to have pulmonary, acute septicaemic and pericardial melioidosis. Some initial improvement was achieved with medical therapy but only with surgical intervention was a successful outcome achieved.
This paper reports a case of double orifice mitral valve which was treated conservatively. A new scheme of classification of this entity linked to the accepted lines of surgical treatment is introduced.
This article describes a technique which allows the patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) to be closed through a minithoracotomy. It combines a simple method of inducing atelectasis with Ligaclip closure of the PDA through a subaxillary incision. It was used successfully in 11 children and adolescents.
This study was undertaken to determine whether an infusion of local anesthetic (LA) delivered through an extrapleural tunnel could provide satisfactory control of pain in the postthoracotomy period. Twelve patients undergoing thoracotomy were studied. A T-shaped tunnel was created by elevating the parietal pleura at the posteromedial end of the thoracotomy wound. An irrigation catheter was then inserted and an infusion of bupivacaine commenced, initially at 5 mg/kg/24 h and subsequently at 3 mg/kg/24 h. Pain was well controlled in eight patients and satisfactory in four patients. The latter required one dose of opiate analgesia each in the 48-h postoperative period. We conclude that an infusion of bupivacaine into the extrapleural space is an effective means of control of pain after thoracotomy.
Twelve cases of purulent pericarditis seen over 6 years are described. Staphylococcus aureus was the most common causative organism (six patients), and a respiratory infection was the most common preceding illness. The chest radiograph and echocardiogram were useful pointers to the diagnosis, but the electrocardiogram was not reliable. Antibiotics, surgical drainage, and pericardiectomy were used in all 12 cases. There was one death (8.3%), which occurred in a patient who was seen late. A review of the literature dealing with the diagnosis and management of this condition is presented. The importance of early diagnosis before a significant degree of cardiac tamponade occurs is noted. Although there is general agreement that surgical drainage is mandatory, the approach, methods of drainage, and extent of pericardial resection have been the subject of some discussion, and at least seven techniques are available. We conclude that pericardiectomy has a definite place in the management of purulent pericarditis.
People struggle to name odors [1-4]. This has been attributed to a diminution of olfaction in trade-off to vision [5-10]. This presumption has been challenged recently by data from the hunter-gatherer Jahai who, unlike English speakers, find odors as easy to name as colors [4]. Is the superior olfactory performance among the Jahai because of their ecology (tropical rainforest), their language family (Aslian), or because of their subsistence (they are hunter-gatherers)? We provide novel evidence from the hunter-gatherer Semaq Beri and the non-hunter-gatherer (swidden-horticulturalist) Semelai that subsistence is the critical factor. Semaq Beri and Semelai speakers-who speak closely related languages and live in the tropical rainforest of the Malay Peninsula-took part in a controlled odor- and color-naming experiment. The swidden-horticulturalist Semelai found odors much more difficult to name than colors, replicating the typical Western finding. But for the hunter-gatherer Semaq Beri odor naming was as easy as color naming, suggesting that hunter-gatherer olfactory cognition is special.
Pulmonary zygomycosis rarely occurs in the absence of underlying disease. We report a patient with granulomatous pulmonary zygomycosis without underlying disease who presented with a pulmonary mass. We present the computed tomographic findings that we believe have not been described previously. We also report the successful treatment by pneumonectomy.
This paper examines the application of a bootstrap test error estimation of radial basis functions, specifically thin-plate spline fitting, in surface smoothing. The presence of noisy data is a common issue of the point set model that is generated from 3D scanning devices, and hence, point set denoising is one of the main concerns in point set modelling. Bootstrap test error estimation, which is applied when searching for the smoothing parameters of radial basis functions, is revisited. The main contribution of this paper is a smoothing algorithm that relies on a bootstrap-based radial basis function. The proposed method incorporates a k-nearest neighbour search and then projects the point set to the approximated thin-plate spline surface. Therefore, the denoising process is achieved, and the features are well preserved. A comparison of the proposed method with other smoothing methods is also carried out in this study.
We present the smooth and visually pleasant display of 2D data when it is convex, which is contribution towards the improvements over existing methods. This improvement can be used to get the more accurate results. An attempt has been made in order to develop the local convexity-preserving interpolant for convex data using C(2) rational cubic spline. It involves three families of shape parameters in its representation. Data dependent sufficient constraints are imposed on single shape parameter to conserve the inherited shape feature of data. Remaining two of these shape parameters are used for the modification of convex curve to get a visually pleasing curve according to industrial demand. The scheme is tested through several numerical examples, showing that the scheme is local, computationally economical, and visually pleasing.
Propofol anaesthesia using target control infusion during cardiac surgery has become more popular recently. However, without depth of anaesthesia monitoring, the standard target concentration used may be higher than necessary to maintain adequate hypnosis during hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of bispectral index monitoring on propofol administration during hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass. After ethics committee approval and written informed consent, 20 New York Heart Association class I-III patients scheduled for elective cardiac surgery requiring hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass were studied in this prospective randomised controlled trial. In group C, routine anaesthesia was practised, where patients received propofol at target concentration between 1.5 to 2.5 microg/ml during cardiopulmonary bypass. In group B, the target concentration was titrated to a bispectral index value of 40 to 50. Mean arterial pressure and bispectral index were recorded at various time intervals. The use of propofol, phenylephrine, sodium nitroprusside and adrenaline were recorded. The median propofol administration in group B was significantly less than that in group C (2.9 mg/kg/h compared to 6.0 mg/kg/h). The bispectral index value during bypass was significantly lower in group C than in group B, reflecting a deeper state of anaesthesia. There was no difference in the use of inotropes, vasoconstrictors or vasodilators. Bispectral index monitoring enables a 50% reduction in propofol administration at this standard dose during hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass.
Hyperplasia of the thymus is the most common anterior mediastinal mass in infants. It is however exceedingly difficult to evaluate by the weight of the gland as it continues to grow after birth until puberty and thereafter undergoes progressive atrophy. It normally maintains most of the radiographic characteristics of the normal thymus. Massive thymic hyperplasia, a rare variant of true thymic hyperplasia is extremely rare during the first two decades of life and clinically can cause mediastinal compression or acute and recurrent pulmonary infection. Two such cases are reported and the clinico-pathology is briefly described and discussed.
Reference charts are widely used in healthcare as a screening tool. This study aimed to produce reference growth charts for school children from West Malaysia in comparison with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) chart.
The automatic traffic sign detection and recognition (TSDR) system is very important research in the development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Investigations on vision-based TSDR have received substantial interest in the research community, which is mainly motivated by three factors, which are detection, tracking and classification. During the last decade, a substantial number of techniques have been reported for TSDR. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on traffic sign detection, tracking and classification. The details of algorithms, methods and their specifications on detection, tracking and classification are investigated and summarized in the tables along with the corresponding key references. A comparative study on each section has been provided to evaluate the TSDR data, performance metrics and their availability. Current issues and challenges of the existing technologies are illustrated with brief suggestions and a discussion on the progress of driver assistance system research in the future. This review will hopefully lead to increasing efforts towards the development of future vision-based TSDR system.
Consecutive 25 patients (M/F:18/7) underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) for various chest illnesses. These included nine cases of pneumothorax, three cases of pericardial effusion, three cases of pleural effusion, four cases of lung lesion requiring either incisional or excisional biopsy, two cases of empyema, one case of traumatic haemothorax, and three cases of mediastinal lesion. The mean age was 36.2 years (range 19-78 years). A total of forty-three procedures were performed. The mean durations of intrapleural chest-tube requirement and hospitalisation following VATS alone were 4.5 days (range: 0-13 days) and 8.3 days (range: 2-25 days) respectively. No intraoperative complication and VATS procedure-related mortality reported. Apart from simple analgesics such as paracetamol or tramadolol, no opiate analgesia was given to patients undergoing only VATS. The results support that VATS is a safe and effective procedure in the management of pulmonary, mediastinal, pericardial and pleural diseases and the treatment of persistent and recurrent spontaneous pneumothorax.
Olfaction presents a particularly interesting arena to explore abstraction in language. Like other abstract domains, such as time, odours can be difficult to conceptualize. An odour cannot be seen or held, it can be difficult to locate in space, and for most people odours are difficult to verbalize. On the other hand, odours give rise to primary sensory experiences. Every time we inhale we are using olfaction to make sense of our environment. We present new experimental data from 30 Jahai hunter-gatherers from the Malay Peninsula and 30 matched Dutch participants from the Netherlands in an odour naming experiment. Participants smelled monomolecular odorants and named odours while reaction times, odour descriptors and facial expressions were measured. We show that while Dutch speakers relied on concrete descriptors, i.e. they referred to odour sources (e.g. smells like lemon), the Jahai used abstract vocabulary to name the same odours (e.g. musty). Despite this differential linguistic categorization, analysis of facial expressions showed that the two groups, nevertheless, had the same initial emotional reactions to odours. Critically, these cross-cultural data present a challenge for how to think about abstraction in language.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.