Thoracic size-selective sampling of fibres: performance of four types of thoracic sampler in laboratory tests.

The counting of fibres on membrane filters could be facilitated by using size-selective samplers to exclude coarse particulate and fibres that impede fibre counting. Furthermore, the use of thoracic size selection would also remove the present requirement to discriminate fibres by diameter during counting. However, before thoracic samplers become acceptable for sampling fibres, their performance with fibres needs to be determined.

A collaborative European study of personal inhalable aerosol sampler performance.

Following the adoption of new international sampling conventions for inhalable, thoracic and respirable aerosol fractions, a working group of Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN) drafted a standard for the performance of workplace aerosol sampling instruments. The present study was set up to verify the experimental, statistical and mathematical procedures recommended in the draft performance standard and to check that they could be applied to inhalable aerosol samplers. This was achieved by applying the tests to eight types of personal inhalable aerosol sampler commonly used for workplace monitoring throughout Europe.

Efficiency and cost-effectiveness of advanced EMS in West Germany.

A model study was performed by an economist in Lower Frankonia (a mostly rural area of West Germany with several urban centers) to examine the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the emergency medical service that included prehospital physician presence. To perform this examination about $3.5 million were spent to improve organization and communication within the local emergency medical service, to purchase additional equipment and further emergency vehicles, and to install prehospital emergency physician service.

Digital cine angiographic evaluation of pulmonary blood flow velocity in ventricular septal defect.

Forty-one routine right ventricular cineangiograms of children with ventricular septal defect (VSD) were evaluated with a digital image processing system. The purpose was to extract from the cineangiogram functional images that would provide information about pulmonary blood flow in these patients. The time delay of the contrast bolus between the main pulmonary artery and peripheral lung fields was measured and called "arrival time.