Personalized Medicine Approach in Treating Parkinson's Disease, Using Oral Administration of Levodopa/Carbidopa Microtablets in Clinical Practice.

The most effective symptomatic treatment in Parkinson's disease (PD) is levodopa in standard doses. However, as the disease progresses, there may be a need for a more personalized approach and fine tuning, in accordance with the patients' needs. This study aims to evaluate the individual experience of levodopa/carbidopa 5/1.

Initial Experience of the Levodopa-Entacapone-Carbidopa Intestinal Gel in Clinical Practice.

Patients in fluctuating stages of Parkinson's disease (PD) require device-aided treatments. Continuous infusion of levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG) is a well-proven option in clinical practice. We now report the first clinical experience of levodopa-entacapone-carbidopa intestinal gel (LECIG) therapy.

Comparison of in vivo vs. ex situ obtained material properties of sheep common carotid artery.

Patient-specific biomechanical modelling can improve preoperative surgical planning. This requires patient-specific geometry as well as patient-specific material properties as input. The latter are, however, still quite challenging to estimate in vivo.

Shear Wave Elastography Quantifies Stiffness in Ex Vivo Porcine Artery with Stiffened Arterial Region.

Five small porcine aortas were used as a human carotid artery model, and their stiffness was estimated using shear wave elastography (SWE) in the arterial wall and a stiffened artery region mimicking a stiff plaque. To optimize the SWE settings, shear wave bandwidth was measured with respect to acoustic radiation force push length and number of compounded angles used for motion detection with plane wave imaging. The mean arterial wall and simulated plaque shear moduli varied from 41 ± 5 to 97 ± 10 kPa and from 86 ± 13 to 174 ± 35 kPa, respectively, over the pressure range 20-120 mmHg.

Arterial Stiffness Estimation by Shear Wave Elastography: Validation in Phantoms with Mechanical Testing.

Arterial stiffness is an independent risk factor found to correlate with a wide range of cardiovascular diseases. It has been suggested that shear wave elastography (SWE) can be used to quantitatively measure local arterial shear modulus, but an accuracy assessment of the technique for arterial applications has not yet been performed. In this study, the influence of confined geometry on shear modulus estimation, by both group and phase velocity analysis, was assessed, and the accuracy of SWE in comparison with mechanical testing was measured in nine pressurized arterial phantoms.

Ultrasound speckle tracking strain estimation of in vivo carotid artery plaque with in vitro sonomicrometry validation.

Our objective was to validate a previously developed speckle tracking (ST) algorithm to assess strain in common carotid artery plaques. Radial and longitudinal strain was measured in common carotid artery gel phantoms with a plaque-mimicking inclusion using an in-house ST algorithm and sonomicrometry. Moreover, plaque strain by ST for seven patients (77 ± 6 y) with carotid atherosclerosis was compared with a quantitative visual assessment by two experienced physicians.