BACKGROUND Drug-eluting stents (DESs) and bare metal stents (BMSs) are both recommended to improve coronary revascularization and to treat coronary artery disease in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, the potential superiority of DESs over BMSs for reducing the incidence of long-term major adverse cardiovascular events and mortality in CKD patients has not been established, an...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), with its excellent soft tissue contrast is currently the best imaging technique available for the assessment of articular cartilage [1]. In the detection of cartilage defects, three-dimensional (3D) MRI is particularly useful because cartilage is a thin sheet wrapped around complex anatomical structure. Isotropic, high resolution voxels enable reformatting of i...

OBJECTIVES This study sought to compare various 3D cartilage sequences and to evaluate the usefulness of ultrashort TE (UTE) imaging, a new technique to isolate signal from the osteochondral junction. METHODS Twenty knees were examined at 3 T with 3D spoiled GRE (FLASH), double-echo steady-state (DESS), balanced SSFP, 3D turbo spin-echo (TSE), and a prototype UTE sequence. Two radiologists in...

Excised patellar cartilage phantoms with artificial surface lesions were imaged in a 2 g/dl albumin solution to determine the effect of cartilage/fluid contrast on detection of early degenerative change. Surface lesions consisted of full-thickness holes, superficial grooves, and coarse abrasion. Phantoms were imaged with a T1-weighted fast low-angle shot (FLASH) and T2*-weighted dual-echo in th...

BACKGROUND The application of coronary stents, especially drug-eluting stents (DESs), has made percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) one of important therapeutic methods for CHD. DES has reduced the in-stent restenosis to 5%-9% and significantly improved the long-term prognosis of patients with CHD. The study aimed to investigate the long-term efficacy and safety of domestic drug-eluting ste...

Abstract— The failure diagnosis for discrete event systems (DESs) has been given considerable attention in recent years. Both on-line and off-line diagnostics in the framework of DESs was first considered by Lin Feng in 1994, and particularly an algorithm for diagnosability of DESs was presented. Motivated by some existing problems to be overcome in previous work, in this paper, we investigate ...

DEV&DESS was defined to represent combined continuous and discrete model event simulation models and was shown to have the properties expected from a universal representation of such models in “Theory of Modeling and Simulation.” Also in that theory, it was shown that DEVS can provide accurate simulations of DESS models. In this paper, we offer a proof that DEVS on its own is capable of accurat...

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the use of drug-eluting stents (DESs), as compared with bare-metal stents (BMSs) in Korea. MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective cohort study was conducted between January 2000 and December 2007. Subjects were stent-treated for the first time between 2004 and 2005, with four years of follow-up (2004-2007) (n=43674). The i...

This meta-analysis was undertaken to assess the efficacy and safety of drug-eluting stents (DESs) compared to bare metal stents (BMSs) in saphenous vein graft (SVG) interventions. DESs decrease the risk of target vessel revascularization in native coronary arteries compared to BMSs. The ideal treatment strategy in patients with SVG disease is unknown. A search of the published reports was condu...