Objective To investigate the application and techni ques of endoscop ic linear stapling device in complete video-assisted thoracoscopic lobectomy, a n d to improve the safety and quality of the operation. Methods From September 2006 to January 2008,sixty consecutive complete video-assisted thoracoscopic lo b ectomies were performed. The patients include 30 men and 30 women with average a ge of 59.8 years old. Eight patients suffered from benign lung lesions, and 52 p atients suffered from primary lung cancers or other pulmonary malignancy. The op erations were performed under general anesthesia with doublelumen intubation a nd complete thoracoscopy.The procedures include 12 right upper lobectomies, 10 right middle lobectomies, 14 right lower lobectomies, 8 left upper lobectomies a nd 16 left lower lobectomies. All arteries, veins, bronchus involved were manag ed with endoscopic linear stapling devices. Results All the pr ocedures were successful with one conversion case（1.67%） due to tense lymph no des adhesion, no severe complications, as active bleeding, continuous air leak, foreign body reac tion or operation related death occured. Endoscopic linear stapling devices were used for stapling in 381 different procedures with average of 6.35 per case, am ong which 124 (2.06 per case)were for pulmonary arteries, 66(1.10 per case) for pulmonary veins, 60 for lobar bronchus and 131 for interlobar fissures.A period of 11.3 months (2-18 months) follow-up of all patients shows no dela yed bleeding, bronchialpleural fistula, pyothorax or pneumonia. Concl usion The application of endoscopic linear stapling device is one of th e major difficulty in complete video-assisted thoracoscopic lobectomy. Careful manipulation under some specific principles is the key for the security of the operation.
Objectives To evaluate the effectiveness, safety, applicability and economy of psychological assessment instruments including checklists, questionnaires and scales used in population exposed to earthquake. MethodsWe searched PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, CBM, CNKI, VIP, WanFang Data, and CiNii databases, as well as special websites about earthquake and disaster management from inception to July 30th, 2014 to collect studies related to psychological assessment of population exposed to earthquake in the first month after quake. A descriptive analysis was conducted to analyze the positive detection rate of psychological problems, rate of informed consent, and effective response rate in population exposed to earthquake, as well as the cost of psychological assessment. ResultsA total of 67 studies were included which involved 4 instruments including Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90), Self-Reporting Questionnaire-20 (SRQ-20), Chinese Psychosomatic Health Scale-134 (CPSHS-134) and 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). SCL-90 was the most commonly used scale. Forty-five studies reported the positive detection rate of psychological problems in population exposed to earthquake. The positive detection rates by using SCL-90, GHQ-12 and SRQ-20 were 8.6% to 77.8%, 65.6% to 89.9% and 65.6% to 89.9%, respectively. Informed consent was reported in 27 studies, and effective response rate was reported in 20 studies with the highest one 99.56% for CPSHS-134. No study reported the cost of psychological assessment. ConclusionSCL-90, RQ-20, CPSHS-134 and GHQ-12 are mainly used instruments for assessing psychological problems in population exposed to earthquake in the first month after quake. The reporting of important information related to effectiveness, safety, applicability and economy of psychological assessment instruments is insufficient and not standardized. A concise and authoritative psychological assessment instrument for population exposed to earthquake is warranted.
Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are easily disturbed by internal and external noise, and its morphological characteristics show significant variations for different patients. Even for the same patient, its characteristics are variable under different temporal and physical conditions. Therefore, ECG signal detection and recognition for the heart disease real-time monitoring and diagnosis are still difficult. Based on this, a wavelet self-adaptive threshold denoising combined with deep residual convolutional neural network algorithm was proposed for multiclass arrhythmias recognition. ECG signal filtering was implemented using wavelet adaptive threshold technology. A 20-layer convolutional neural network (CNN) containing multiple residual blocks, namely deep residual convolutional neural network (DR-CNN), was designed for recognition of five types of arrhythmia signals. The DR-CNN constructed by residual block local neural network units alleviated the difficulty of deep network convergence, the difficulty in tuning and so on. It also overcame the degradation problem of the traditional CNN when the network depth was increasing. Furthermore, the batch normalization of each convolution layer improved its convergence. Following the recommendations of the Association for the Advancements of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), experimental results based on 94 091 2-lead heart beats from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia benchmark database demonstrated that our proposed method achieved the average detection accuracy of 99.034 9%, 99.498 0% and 99.334 7% for multiclass classification, ventricular ectopic beat (Veb) and supra-Veb (Sveb) recognition, respectively. Using the same platform and database, experimental results showed that under the comparable network complexity, our proposed method significantly improved the recognition accuracy, sensitivity and specificity compared to the traditional deep learning networks, such as deep Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), CNN, etc. The DR-CNN algorithm improves the accuracy of the arrhythmia intelligent diagnosis. If it is combined with wearable equipment, internet of things and wireless communication technology, the prevention, monitoring and diagnosis of heart disease can be extended to out-of-hospital scenarios, such as families and nursing homes. Therefore, it will improve the cure rate, and effectively save the medical resources.
Mendelian randomization is a special type of instrumental variable analysis. Its application in the medical field increases in popularity because of its obvious advantages and the rapid development of genomics. This article aimed to introduce the basic concepts, principles, common methods, and limitations of Mendelian randomization. It is expected to provide guidance for researchers to conduct Mendelian randomization studies.