Clinical factors increasing radiation doses to patients undergoing long-lasting procedures: abdominal stent-graft implantation.

Background: An important negative factor of EVAR is the radiation acquired during long-lasting procedures. The aim of the study was to document the radiation doses of EVAR and to discuss potential reasons for prolongation of radiological procedures.

Material/methods: Dose-area product (DAP) (Gy cm²) and air kerma (AK) (Gy) obtained during EVAR from 92 patients were analyzed retrospectively in regards to body mass index (BMI), angulations of aneurysm neck, length of aneurysm neck and occurrence of tortuosity of iliac arteries.

Perception of speech in reverberant conditions using AM-FM cochlear implant simulation.

This study assessed the effects of speech misidentification and cognitive processing errors in normal-hearing adults listening to degraded auditory input signals simulating cochlear implants in reverberation conditions. Three variables were controlled: number of vocoder channels (six and twelve), instantaneous frequency change rate (none, 50, 400 Hz), and enclosures (different reverberation conditions). The analyses were made on the basis of: (a) nonsense word recognition scores for eight young normal-hearing listeners, (b) 'ease of listening' based on the time of response, and (c) the subjective measure of difficulty.

Perceptual consequences of changes in vocoded speech parameters in various reverberation conditions.

Purpose: To study the perceptual consequences of changes in parameters of vocoded speech in various reverberation conditions.

Method: The 3 controlled variables were number of vocoder bands, instantaneous frequency change rate, and reverberation conditions. The effects were quantified in terms of (a) nonsense words' recognition scores for young normal-hearing listeners, (b) ease of listening based on the time of response (response delay), and (c) the subjective measure of difficulty (10-degree scale).