BACKGROUND There is not enough evidence to determine the most appropriate treatment of postextubation stridor. Although the cuff leak test is a simple method to predict postextubation stridor, little is known about its use in monitoring the effects of steroid treatment for this complication. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of steroids on postextubation stridor based on the clin...

BACKGROUND Placing chest tubes to water seal is superior for patients with an air leak, but when a patient has a pneumothorax and an air leak the best chest tube setting is unknown. METHODS This is a retrospective analysis of a prospective database on a consecutive series of patients who had a pneumothorax and air leak on the same day. Patients underwent elective pulmonary resection by one su...

Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) contributes importantly to septic pulmonary protein leak in mice with septic acute lung injury (ALI). However, the role of alveolar macrophage (AM) iNOS in septic ALI is not known. Thus we assessed the specific effects of AM iNOS in murine septic ALI through selective AM depletion (via intratracheal instillation of clodronate liposomes) and subsequent AM r...

Capillary leak in severe sepsis involves disruption of endothelial cell tight junctions. We modeled this process by TNF treatment of cultured human dermal microvascular endothelial cell (HDMEC) monolayers, which unlike human umbilical vein endothelial cells form claudin-5-dependent tight junctions and a high-resistance permeability barrier. Continuous monitoring with electrical cell-substrate i...

BACKGROUND The i-gel differs from other supraglottic airway devices, in that it has a softer, non-inflatable cuff. This study was designed to compare the performance of the i-gel and the LMA-Unique (LMA-U) when used during anaesthesia in paralysed patients. METHODS Both devices were studied in 39 anaesthetized, paralysed patients in a randomized crossover trial. The primary outcome was airway...

Memory leaks are caused by allocating memory blocks and not releasing them after their last use. In most modern programs, dynamic data structures are used quite extensively. In this case, only knowing the allocation site of leaked memory blocks, as reported by most current tools, is often not enough to fix said leaks. It is also possible that all pointers to a memory block were overwritten duri...

may 20 09 A lf re d T. K A m A ji A n One of the most remarkable features of the solar system is the variety of planetary atmospheres. Earth and Venus are of comparable size and mass, yet the surface of Venus bakes at 460 degrees Celsius under an ocean of carbon dioxide that bears down with the weight of a kilometer of water. Callisto and Titan—planet-size moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectiv...