Abdominal wall incisional hernia repair improves respiratory function: results after 3 years of follow-up.

Purpose: Hernias severely impact patient quality of life (QoL), and 80% of patients require a surgical operation. Moreover, hernias are responsible for respiratory function alterations. This study aims to investigate the postoperative alterations in respiratory function after open ventral hernia repair in patients with incisional hernia.

Carotenoid coloration is related to fat digestion efficiency in a wild bird.

Some of the most spectacular visual signals found in the animal kingdom are based on dietarily derived carotenoid pigments (which cannot be produced de novo), with a general assumption that carotenoids are limited resources for wild organisms, causing trade-offs in allocation of carotenoids to different physiological functions and ornamentation. This resource trade-off view has been recently questioned, since the efficiency of carotenoid processing may relax the trade-off between allocation toward condition or ornamentation. This hypothesis has so far received little exploratory support, since studies of digestive efficiency of wild animals are limited due to methodological difficulties.

Improved patient/technique survival and peritonitis rates in patients treated with automated peritoneal dialysis when compared to continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis in a Mexican PD center.

Since its introduction in Mexico in 1998, the use of automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) has grown steadily and now 35% of Mexican patients are being treated with it. Peritonitis continues to be the most important infectious cause of drop out in peritoneal dialysis (PD) programs and naturally has an impact on technique survival. The objective of this study was to compare patient and technical survival as well as peritonitis rates in APD vs continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) in our hospital PD program.