BACKGROUND Morbid obesity remains a potential relative contraindication for cardiac transplantation. Hence, a select population of morbidly obese patients with end-stage heart failure may require a ventricular assist device (VAD) as a bridge to transplantation to afford them time to lose sufficient weight and thus decrease there mortality rate after transplantation. Unfortunately, obtaining sui...

Severe obesity is a chronic disease requiring continuing care. Optimal outcomes of laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding using the LAP-BAND (INAMED Health, Santa Barbara, CA) depend on accurate placement of the band and excellent postplacement care, which requires a long-term commitment from both the patient and the bariatric surgical team. Adjustability is a key feature of the LAP-BAND syste...

Esophageal perforation is a serious complication that requires prompt recognition and treatment. We present the case of a patient with lower esophageal perforation that apparently resulted from orogastric calibration-tube passage during laparoscopic placement of a gastric band. The complication was diagnosed early postoperatively, and was able to be successfully treated by laparoscopy,debanding...

The early promise of laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding was tempered by reports of high rates of gastric herniation or prolapse. These complications are a function of the operative technique used early on. At the time, in the early 1990s, the LAP-BAND device (INAMED Health, Santa Barbara, CA) was placed lower on the stomach, near the first short gastric vessel. The required perigastric dis...

introduction: one of the most common problems we confront in orthodontic therapy is periodontal diseases. initial factor which causes these diseases is colonization of anaerobic microorganisms in subgingival plaque. technically, local environmental changes related to orthodontic band and brackets may influence the bacterial species in periodontal plaque. however, it seems necessary to assess va...

Despite widespread use the cognitive demands of the five-disc Tower of London (TOL) are unknown. Research suggests that conflict moves (those that are essential to the solution but do not place a disc in its final position) are a key aspect of performance. These were examined in three studies via a verification paradigm, in which normal participants were asked to decide whether a demonstrated m...

This note shows that the hope expressed in [ADL07]—that the new algorithm for edge-unfolding any polyhedral band without overlap might lead to an algorithm for unfolding any prismatoid without overlap—cannot be realized. A prismatoid is constructed whose sides constitute a nested polyhedral band, with the property that every placement of the prismatoid top face overlaps with the band unfolding.