Successful resuscitation of an elderly man with deep accidental hypothermia using portable extracorporeal circulation in the emergency department: a case report.

Introduction: Deep accidental hypothermia (body temperature below 28 degrees C) is rare and has a high mortality rate. Successful resuscitation usually occurs in the young, but a prompt intervention using a portable extracorporeal cardiopulmonary circulation device can also provide a good outcome for older persons.

Case Presentation: We report the successful resuscitation of an 82-year-old male from deep accidental hypothermia using portable extracorporeal circulation in the emergency department.

Outcome after thoracic aortic injury: experience in a level-1 trauma center.

Traumatic rupture of the thoracic aorta is a potentially fatal injury that leads to death in 75-90% of cases at the time of injury. In this report, we present our experience with traumatic thoracic aortic injury and compare the outcome in patients with respect to their hemodynamic stability at presentation and the timing of surgical repair. We performed a retrospective data analysis of the medical records of 30 patients who had sustained a traumatic rupture of the thoracic aorta during the period from January 1, 2000 to October 30, 2005.

Surgical educator preferences regarding key objective structured clinical examination topics.

Background: Numerous methods are used for assessing the performance of surgical residents and students. Unfortunately, these same methods are often unsatisfactory. One technique that is gaining increased favor is the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE).

Objective Structured Clinical Examination technical skill stations correlate more closely with postgraduate year level than do clinical skill stations.

Validity of an examination format is supported by its ability to distinguish levels of training among examinees. The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a developing format generally composed of various types of task-oriented stations used to evaluate clinical skills of students and residents. The ideal composition of OSCE stations to maximize validity has not been determined.

Strain differences in neointimal hyperplasia in the rat.

We performed an initial screen of 11 rat strains by use of a standard balloon injury to the left iliac artery to observe whether genetically determined differences existed in the development of neointimal hyperplasia. Neointimal hyperplasia was assayed 8 weeks after the vascular injury on coded microscopic sections. Statistically significant differences in the percentages of the vascular wall cross-sectional areas composed of intima (percentage intima) secondary to neointimal hyperplasia were noted among the different rat strains (P<0.