Patient profile and results of percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy in mitral restenosis following prior percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy vs surgical commissurotomy.

Background: Patients with mitral restenosis who have undergone prior PTMC or surgical commissurotomy have increased. Predictors of outcome of repeat PTMC in either subgroup of patients may be different.

Aims And Objectives: Aim was to assess and compare the immediate results of PTMC in patients who had undergone a prior PTMC or surgical commissurotomy.

Efficacy and safety of tenecteplase in pulmonary embolism.

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a relatively common life-threatening cardiovascular condition associated with significant morbidity and mortality. We present the efficacy and safety data of weight-adjusted tenecteplase in 30 consecutive patients of acute PE. 30 patients (22 male, 8 female) with acute PE were included in the study and divided into three groups: (1) Acute PE complicated by shock stage and/or persistent hypotension (12 patients).

Membrane hydrophone phase characteristics through nonlinear acoustics measurements.

This work considers the need for both the amplitude and phase to fully characterize polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane hydrophones and presents a comprehensive discussion of the nonlinear acoustic measurements utilized to extract the phase information and the experimental results taken with two widely used PVDF membrane hydrophones up to 100 MHz. A semi-empirical computer model utilized the hyperbolic propagation operator to predict the nonlinear pressure field and provide the complex frequency response of the corresponding source transducer. The PVDF hydrophone phase characteristics, which were obtained directly from the difference between the computer-modeled nonlinear field simulation and the corresponding measured harmonic frequency phase values, agree to within 10% with the phase predictions obtained from receive-transfer-function simulations based on software modeling of the membrane's physical properties.

Time-reversal Techniques in Ultrasound-assisted Convection-enhanced Drug Delivery to the Brain: Technology Development and In Vivo Evaluation.

We describe a drug delivery method that combines Time-Reversal Acoustics (TRA) with Convection-Enhanced Delivery (CED) to improve the delivery of therapeutics to the interstitium of the brain. The Ultrasound-assisted CED approach (UCED) circumvents the blood-brain barrier by infusing compounds through a cannula that is inserted into the brain while simultaneously delivering ultrasound to improve the penetration of pharmaceuticals. CED without ultrasound-assistance has been used to treat a variety of neural disorders, including glioblastoma multiforme, a malignancy that presents a very poor prognosis for patients.

Interaction of variable bacterial outer membrane lipoproteins with brain endothelium.

Background: Previously we reported that the variable outer membrane lipoprotein Vsp1 from the relapsing fever spirochete Borrelia turicatae disseminates from blood to brain better than the closely related Vsp2 [1]. Here we studied the interaction between Vsp1 and Vsp2 with brain endothelium in more detail.

Methodology/principal Findings: We compared Vsp1 to Vsp2 using human brain microvascular endothelial cell (HBMEC) association assays with aminoacid radiolabeled Vsp-expressing clones of recombinant Borrelia burgdorferi and lanthanide-labeled purified lipidated Vsp1 (LVsp1) and Vsp2 (LVsp2) and inoculations of the lanthanide-labeled proteins into mice.

Thin film metal coated fiber optic hydrophone probe.

Our purpose is to improve the performance sensitivity of a fiber sensor used as a fiber optic hydrophone probe (FOHP) by the addition of nanoscale thin film gold coating. The fiber is designed to provide a uniform and spatial averaging free response up to 100 MHz by etching down to an active diameter of approximately 9 mum. The performance sensitivity of straight cleaved (i.