Vocational rehabilitation of locomotive engineers with ischaemic heart disease.

Background: There is resistance among railway companies and their occupational health services to rehabilitating locomotive engineers with ischaemic heart disease to their former driving work.

Aim: To study the outcome of vocational rehabilitation for locomotive engineers with ischaemic heart disease.

Methods: In seven European countries, selected locomotive engineers with ischaemic heart disease were compared to a matched group of healthy engineers.

Chemical analysis of cancer therapy photosensitizers by two-step laser mass spectrometry.

We have applied two-step laser mass spectrometry (L2MS) to the qualitative chemical analysis of porphyrin-derived photosensitizer dyes used for detection and photodynamic therapy of cancer. The only ionization technique applied so far to these low-volatility compounds had been fast atom bombardment (FAB), which suffers from problems associated with cluster formation of the porphyrins upon FAB ionization. From FAB and chromatography data, the existence of porphyrin dimers, trimers, and oligomers in commercial photosensitizers was concluded to be crucial for tumor localization, but it is possible that clustering or preformed van der Waals aggregates gave rise to these results.