Stent placement is an essential treatment for airway diseases. Although self-expandable metallic stents and silicone stents are commonly applied for the treatment of airway diseases, these stents are unsuitable for the treatment of small airway diseases encountered in pediatric patients and lung transplant recipients with airway complications. Currently, only vascular balloon-expandable metalli...

Implanting a self-expandable stent at the ostium of the common iliac artery (CIA) may lead to coverage of the orifice of the contralateral CIA. Here, we describe a novel application of the culotte stent technique using a balloon-expandable stent to bail out an ostial stenotic legion of a jailed CIA due to prior self-expandable stent placement. The bilateral CIAs were revascularized by culotte s...

Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has become standard therapy for patients with severe aortic stenosis who are deemed at least intermediate risk for surgical valve replacement. Over the past decade, several technological advances have taken place to improve the quality and safety of these devices. The current commercially available valves are broadly grouped into balloon expandable ...

Objective: Cervical spondylotic myelopathy is a progressive debilitating disease that favorably responds to surgical decompression. The objective of this study was to review the use of expandable titanium cages for reconstruction of the spine after cervical corpectomy. Methods: We searched PubMed and Google Scholar databases up to March 2013 to identify English articles reporting the use of exp...

Plain reservoirs in arid areas usually have a shallow water depth, a large surface area, and severe evaporative water-loss. To lessen the water loss, a polystyrene board coverage technique was used. This paper represents a demonstrative application study of the polystyrene board coverage technique in the Daquangou Plain Reservoir in the city of Shihezi, Xinjiang. Six different polystyrene board...

Stable nanoparticle dispersion in aqueous solutions was obtained with partially sulfonated polystyrene. The hydrophobic association of the backbone chains and phenyl groups is balanced by the electrostatic repulsion of the sulfonate groups on the particle surface. The size distribution of the sulfonated polystyrene particles in relation to concentration, degree of sulfonation and chain length, ...

OBJECTIVE We evaluate the uniformity and reproducibility of thermal lesion ablation and quantify the volume of tissue destruction and hemorrhage induced with two different commercially available radiofrequency ablation devices. MATERIALS AND METHODS A four-array anchor expandable needle electrode and a triple-cluster cooled-tip needle electrode were used to induce lesions in three explanted c...

OBJECTIVES No comparison of balloon- or self-expandable valved stents (VSs) regarding tissue injury (if any) has been reported yet. The objective was to evaluate the occurrence and compare the severity of traumatic injury to leaflets from balloon- or self-expandable VSs. METHODS Twelve homemade VSs were used for this experiment. These three-leaflet bovine pericardial bioprostheses had either ...

The expandable nail concept uses high-pressure saline to inflate the diameter of a cylindrical implant to achieve fixation within the medullary canal of bone. Expandable nails are used clinically in a number of fracture management applications and have been more recently developed as a femoral component for total hip replacement. In this study, the expandable total hip replacement stem design w...

BACKGROUND Balloon angioplasty for treatment of coarctation of the aorta in adults, though promising, is sometimes limited by significant residual gradient (> 20 mmHg). Few studies have been reported on use of balloon-expandable stents in such a situation. We evaluated the use of self-expandable stents in patients with coarctation of the aorta. METHODS Eight hypertensive patients (age 15 to 2...