We review some of the recent developments of optical performance monitoring (OPM) in various aspects: (i) the enhancement of monitoring resolution, (ii) multi-impairment monitoring, and (iii) OPM network optimization. In particular, some of the studies on the optimization of performance monitoring networks to achieve the optimal monitoring locations and the number of monitoring probes are discu...

BACKGROUND Gentamicin and vancomycin are commonly used in neonatal units for the treatment of life-threatening infections. This study aimed to describe the dosage regimen and the approach to therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) for both antibiotics in units that participate in a UK neonatal network. METHODS Questionnaires were sent to all units across the Extended Neonatal Network, requesting de...

Target concentration intervention (TCI) is proposed as an alternative conceptual strategy to therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). It is argued that the idea of a therapeutic range has limited the interpretation of measured drug concentrations and diminished the anticipated clinical benefit to patients by use of an oversimplified pharmacodynamic model. TCI on the other hand embraces pharmacokineti...

May/June 2012 become an issue in medical-legal cases. There are no national standards for setting parameters for EFM alerts or the timeframe expected for acknowledgement. Often default settings are determined when the system is installed and may vary widely from one institution to another. In many cases, the default settings can be altered by the clinician based on the individual patient situat...

Despite the fact that pharmacokinetic exposure of kinase inhibitors (KIs) is highly variable and clear relationships exist between exposure and treatment outcomes, fixed dosing is still standard practice. This review aims to summarize the available clinical pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data into practical guidelines for individualized dosing of KIs through therapeutic drug monitoring (TD...

Wearable and implantable Electrocardiograph (ECG) devices are becoming prevailing tools for continuous real-time personal health monitoring. The ECG signal can be contaminated by various types of noise and artifacts (e.g., powerline interference, baseline wandering) that must be removed or suppressed for accurate ECG signal processing. Limited device size, power consumption and cost are critica...

We report cases of unexpected adverse fetal outcome from monitored labors in which the fetal heart rate tracing was interpreted as reassuring. In these cases, portions from another signal source, usually maternal, were imperceptibly substituted into the fetal tracing in a way that masked the evidence of fetal compromise.

I t has long been appreciated that a patient’s physiological status is dynamic and subject to rapid, life-threatening changes during surgery Anesthesiologists routinely use extensive physiological monitoring to maintain the patient’s homeostasis. This monitoring can be thought of as establishing a control loop between the anesthesiologist and patient for the purposes of life support. Some infor...

the state of works of art exhibited inside museums can be strongly influenced by indoor air quality, due to chemical activity of gaseous pollutants and particulate matter. for that reason it is important to carry out periodic air quality controls to check if the concentration levels of air pollutants comply with the limits specified by the national laws. in this work we show results obtained i...