BACKGROUND Manufacturers' recommendations on cleaning of tracheostomy tubes focus on general warning information and non-specific manual cleaning procedures. The aim of this experimental study was to evaluate different reprocessing methods and to determine the mechanical integrity and functionality of tracheostomy tubes following reprocessing. METHODS Sixteen cuffed or un-cuffed tracheostomy ...

Artificial teeth on upper and lower typodonts were coated with a plaque. After a drying period, the typodonts were mounted onto the robot system and the teeth were cleaned by the robot for 2 minutes (1 minute upper and 1 minute lower typodont) at a brushing force of 1.8 2.1 N for the 3D toothbrush and 1.1 1.4 N for the sonicare Plus brush. The different brushing forces were chosen in order to f...

Brushing is an effective method to control hypocotyl elongation in cucumbers (Cucumis sativus L. ‘Turbo’) grown in plug trays for transplanting. The amount of daily brushing and the number of days to brush for best performance was determined. Treatment with 10 strokes per day for the 4 days of maximal hypocotyl elongation was sufficient to reduce final hypocotyl length by 25%. More brushing did...

introduction: to assess the efficacy and safety of bronchial artery embolization in the treatment of massive hemoptysis.   materials and methods: a retrospective study on 46 patients (26 males and 20 females) who were referred to the razavi hospital from april 2009 to may 2012 with massive hemoptysis and had bronchial artery embolization procedures. general characteristics of the patients inclu...

BACKGROUND The choice of sampling techniques in bronchoscopy with sampling from a visible lesion will depend on the expected diagnostic yields and the costs of the sampling techniques. AIMS The aim of this study was to determine the most economical combination of sampling techniques when approaching endobronchial visible lesions. METHODS A cost minimization analysis was performed. All bronc...

BACKGROUND Current techniques used to obtain lung samples have significant limitations and do not provide reproducible biomarkers of inflammation. We have developed a novel technique that allows multiple sampling methods from the same area (or multiple areas) of the lung under direct bronchoscopic vision. It allows collection of mucosal lining fluid and bronchial brushing from the same site; bi...

OBJECTIVES The influence of toothbrushing duration and dentifrice quantity on fluoride efficacy against dental caries is poorly understood. This study investigated effects of these two oral hygiene factors on enamel remineralisation (measured as surface microhardness recovery [SMHR]), enamel fluoride uptake (EFU), and net acid resistance (NAR) post-remineralisation in a randomized clinical stud...

The paper describes a tool designed within the first stage of the European project INVISIP in order to explore geographical metadata in the site planning process. A visual data mining approach is applied to a database of geographical metadata to help the user find an optimal subset of the existing geographical datasets for his particular planning task. It allows the user to perform both confirm...