Portal hypertension (PHT) is a heterogeneous clinical entity which develops in patients with cirrhosis. It is responsible for many of the complications that occur in cirrhosis, including gastroesophageal varices, hepatorenal syndrome, ascites, hepatic encephalopathy and hypersplenism. There are three principal factors responsible for the development of PHT, namely (1) purely mechanical obstruct...

BACKGROUND Masked hypertension (MHT) and prehypertension (PHT) are both associated with an increase in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, relative to sustained normotension. This study examined the diagnostic overlap between MHT and PHT, and their interrelationships with left ventricular (LV) mass index (LVMI), a marker of cardiovascular end-organ damage. METHODS A research nurse performed th...

BACKGROUND The currently recommended treatment for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension is pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTE). No convincing evidence for the use of pulmonary hypertensive medical therapy (PHT) exists in operable candidates. We sought to determine the prevalence of the use of PHT on referral for PTE and the effects on pre-PTE hemodynamics and post-PTE outcomes/hemody...

OBJECTIVE To assess perfusion patterns on a dual-energy pulmonary CT angiography (DECTA) of pulmonary hypertension (PHT) with variable causes and to assess whether the extent of perfusion defect can be used in the severity assessment of PHT. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between March 2007 and February 2011, DECTA scans of 62 consecutive patients (24 men, 38 women; mean age, 58.5 ± 17.3 [standard dev...

The lungs are the only organs that receive the entire cardiac output which is delivered at a mean resting pulmonary arterial pressure of 15 mm Hg. The capacitance pulmonary arteries are larger in calibre and have thinner walls than their systemic counterparts. Moreover, the pulmonary circulation possesses little resting vascular tone and has a large reserve for recruitment of vascular segments ...

Sixty-eight patients with convulsive status epilepticus (SE) were randomly assigned to two groups to study the efficacy of sodium valproate (VPA) and phenytoin (PHT). Seizures were aborted in 66% in the VPA group and 42% in the PHT group. As a second choice in refractory patients, VPA was effective in 79% and PHT was effective in 25%. The side effects in the two groups did not differ. Sodium va...

Pulmonary hypertension (PHT) occurs in approximately 30% of adult patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) and is a risk factor for early death. Hypercoagulability has been linked to PHT in general and pulmonary artery thrombosis contributes to PHT progression regardless of its cause. Sickle cell patients are characterized by a hypercoagulable state and both autopsy and imaging studies in sickle...

Thyroidal pain is usually due to subacute thyroiditis (SAT). In more severe forms prednisone doses up to 40 mg daily for 2-3 weeks are recommended. Recurrences occur rarely and restoration of steroid treatment cures the disease. Rarely, patients with Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) have thyroidal pain (painful HT, PHT). Differently from SAT, occasional PHT patients showed no benefit from medical t...

The present study examines the behavioral and psychophysiological effects of phenytoin (PHT) in individuals who display impulsive-aggressive outbursts. In a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design, individuals meeting previously established criteria for impulsive aggression were administered PHT and placebo during separate 6-week conditions. The efficacy measures used were the Overt Ag...

Informative and scalable trust mechanisms that are robust to manipulation by strategic agents are a critical component of multi-agent systems. While the global hitting time mechanism (GHT) introduced by Hopcroft and Sheldon [9] is more robust to manipulation than PageRank, strategic agents can still benefit significantly under GHT by performing sybil attacks. In this paper, we introduce the per...