Computer supported collaborative learning in a clerkship: an exploratory study on the relation of discussion activity and revision of critical appraisal papers.

Background: Medical students in clerkship are continuously confronted with real and relevant patient problems. To support clinical problem solving skills, students perform a Critical Appraisal of a Topic (CAT) task, often resulting in a paper. Because such a paper may contain errors, students could profit from discussion with peers, leading to paper revision.

Easing the transition: the final year of medical education at Maastricht University.

This manuscript describes the final year of medical education at Maastricht University as it has been operating since 2006. At the time external drivers for the development of a new structure of the final year were: the desire to prepare medical students for lifelong learning, the CanMEDs that were increasingly acknowledged to state the final attainment level of medical education and an increasing recognition of the importance of learning by participating actively and by taking more responsibility. Internal drivers were students' evaluations and our wish to improve instructional design and quality control.

Dynamic straining combined with fibrin gel cell seeding improves strength of tissue-engineered small-diameter vascular grafts.

Vascular tissue engineering represents a promising approach for the development of living small-diameter vascular grafts that can be used for replacement therapy. The culture of strong human tissue-engineered (TE) vascular grafts has required long culture times, up to several months, whether or not combined with gene therapy. This article describes the culture of strong, genetically unmodified, human TE vascular grafts in 4 weeks Small-diameter vascular grafts were engineered using a fast-degrading polyglycolic acid scaffold coated with poly-4-hydroxybutyrate combined with fibrin gel and seeded with myofibroblasts isolated from discarded saphenous veins from patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery.

The effectiveness of massage with and without dimethyl sulfoxide in preventing pressure ulcers: a randomized, double-blind cross-over trial in patients prone to pressure ulcers.

Background: Although guidelines advise against massage, it is one of the methods widely regarded and used by nurses to prevent pressure ulcers (PU).

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of different variations of massage in preventing pressure ulcers.

Methods: A randomized, double-blind cross-over design, in which patients of nursing homes who are prone to PU underwent two of the three possible interventions; 'position changes only', 'massaging with an indifferent cream' and 'massaging with a dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) cream'.

Massage to prevent pressure ulcers: knowledge, beliefs and practice. A cross-sectional study among nurses in the Netherlands in 1991 and 2003.

Background: Pressure ulcers are a major problem in all areas of health care in the Netherlands. National guidelines for the prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers were originally developed in 1985 and revised in 1991 and 2002. The value of these guidelines can be questioned because it seems they are not in line with the beliefs and practice of the caregivers and only 5% of them are evidence-based.

The effects of massage as a method to prevent pressure ulcers. A review of the literature.

General information about the effects of massage to prevent pressure ulcers is limited. A literature search was conducted to provide more detailed knowledge about the effects of massage in general and in preventing the development of pressure ulcers in particular. Using the keywords massage, rubbing, prevention of pressure ulcers/pressure ulcers, and paying particular attention to referenced articles yielded a summary of different manual massage techniques and indications/contraindications of this intervention for both healthy tissues and tissues in patients at risk for developing pressure ulcers.

Anisotropic, three-dimensional deformation of single attached cells under compression.

Quantifying three-dimensional deformation of cells under mechanical load is relevant when studying cell deformation in relation to cellular functioning. Because most cells are anchorage dependent for normal functioning, it is desired to study cells in their attached configuration. This study reports new three-dimensional morphometric measurements of cell deformation during stepwise compression experiments with a recently developed cell loading device.

In vivo heat shock preconditioning mitigates calcium overload during ischaemia/reperfusion in the isolated, perfused rat heart.

Heat shock (HS) pretreatment of the heart is effective in mitigating the deleterious effects of ischaemia/reperfusion. The main objective of this study was to determine whether the beneficial effect of HS is associated with the preservation of intracellular Ca2+ handling in the ischaemic/reperfused, isolated rat heart. Twenty-four hours after raising body core temperature to 42 degrees C for 15 min, rat hearts were perfused according to Langendorff and subjected to 30 min ischaemia followed by 20 min reperfusion.

Proteins involved in salvage of the myocardium.

In the Western world, cardiac ischemic disease is still the most common cause of death despite significant improvements of therapeutic drugs and interventions. The fact that the heart possesses an intrinsic protection mechanism has been systematically overlooked before the 1980s. It has been clearly shown that the activation of this mechanism can reduce the infarct size after an ischemic insult.

Quantification of cytoskeletal deformation in living cells based on hierarchical feature vector matching.

The cytoskeleton is a dynamic scaffold in living cells even in the absence of externally imposed forces. In this study on cytoskeletal deformation, the applicability of hierarchical feature vector matching (HFVM), a new matching method, currently applied in space research and three-dimensional surface reconstruction, was investigated. Stably transfected CHO-K1 cells expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) coupled to vimentin were used to visualize spontaneous movement of the vimentin cytoskeleton of individual cells using a confocal laser scanning system.