BACKGROUND Environmental determinants of appendicitis are poorly understood. Past work suggests that air pollution may increase the risk of appendicitis. OBJECTIVES We investigated whether ambient ground-level ozone (O3) concentrations were associated with appendicitis and whether these associations varied between perforated and nonperforated appendicitis. METHODS We based this time-stratif...

BACKGROUND The literature established that, in patients without Boey's risk factors, laparoscopic repair of perforated peptic ulcers, compared to open repair, is associated to lower wound infection rate, less analgesic use, reduction in post operative pain, shorter hospital stay. Some of the main drawbacks are length of operative time and laparoscopic surgeon's experience in intracorporeal knot...

BACKGROUND Perforated peptic ulcers (PPU) present as serious surgical emergencies that carry high mortality and morbidity. Foreigners with PPU are also managed in our hospital setting. Their inclusion significantly alters the trend and pattern of PPU seen in Malaysia. AIM To compare per-operative and post-operative features and outcomes of perforated peptic ulcers between Malaysians and forei...

BACKGROUND Performing a delayed primary wound closure is often recommended in patients with gangrenous or perforated appendicitis who have undergone an appendectomy. It can result in increased pain as well as an extended hospital stay which, in turn, increases hospital costs. Delayed primary wound closure remains controversial. The general policy in our institution is to perform a primary wound...

The paper is a continuation of the works "Modelling of viscous damping of perforated planar micromechanical structures. Applications in acoustics" [Homentcovschi and Miles, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116, 2939-2947 (2004)] and "Viscous Damping of Perforated Planar Micromechanical Structures" [Homentcovschi and Miles, Sensors Actuators, A119, 544-552 (2005)] where design formulas for the case of an off...

BACKGROUND Intra-abdominal abscesses are the most common complication after perforated appendicitis and remain a significant problem ranging in incidence from 14 to 18%. Drainage following appendectomy is usually determined by whether the underlying appendicitis is simple or complicated and largely determined by the surgeons' belief, based on expertise or personal opinion. In this report we dis...

This paper presents results from an investigation of the behavior of unstiffened thin steel plate shear wall SPSW having a regular pattern of openings a.k.a. perforated SPSW . Finite element monotonic pushover analyses were conducted, first on a series of individual perforated strips with variation in perforation diameter, to develop a fundamental understanding of the behavior of complete perfo...

The phenomenon of the surface plasmon assisted electromagnetic field concentration in the vicinity of the metal/dielectric interface of a periodically perforated with subwavelength holes arrays plasmonic structure is considered. An increase of the local stationary magnetic field appearing due to the inverse Faraday effect while the heterostructure is illuminated by circularly polarized light is...

This colloquium analyzes the interaction of light with two-dimensional periodic arrays of particles and holes. The enhanced optical transmission observed in the latter and the presence of surface modes in patterned metal surfaces are thoroughly discussed. A review of the most significant discoveries in this area is presented first. A simple tutorial model is then formulated to capture the essen...

When perforated metal films are sufficiently thin, in addition to exciting surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) modes by conventional two dimensional grating scattering, there is also the possibility of coupling to the localised modes associated with the holes. Here, experimental transmission spectra are obtained from focused ion beam fabricated hole arrays exhibiting localized modes in the visible ...