1,721,023 research outputs found
Rationale and Design of the IN.PACT BTK Randomized Pilot Study: A Paclitaxel Drug-Coated Balloon vs Standard Percutaneous Transluminal Angioplasty for Infrapopliteal Chronic Total Occlusions
No full textObjectives. This is a pilot feasibility study and the objective is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the investigational device, IN.PACT 014 drug-coated balloon (DCB), compared with standard percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) in the treatment of patients with chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) with chronic total occlusions (CTOs) of below-the-knee (BTK) arteries. Methods and Design. The IN.PACT BTK randomized study is a prospective, multicenter, randomized pilot study. Baseline angiography and duplex ultrasonography analyses were performed to confirm that participants met all anatomic and functional eligibility criteria. Successful predilation and strict intraprocedural angiographic and duplex sonographic criteria were conditions of enrollment and randomization. A total of 50 participants were enrolled and randomized 1:1 into DCB (n = 23) or control PTA (n = 27) treatment groups. The primary effectiveness endpoint is late lumen loss at 9 months post procedure. Secondary endpoints include a composite safety endpoint (freedom from device- and procedure-related mortality within 30 days, and freedom from major target-limb amputation and freedom from clinically driven target-lesion revascularization within 9 months after the procedure) and the rate of major adverse events. Participants are being followed through 5 years. All angiographic and duplex ultrasonography images are reviewed by independent core laboratories and all major adverse events are adjudicated by an independent clinical events committee. Discussion and Conclusion. This is a rigorously designed BTK trial in which participant selection and enrollment were a unique aspect, guided by a strict requirement for successful vessel preparation before randomization using explicit angiographic and duplex ultrasound parameters
Update on the TURBO BOOSTER spectranetics laser for lower extremity occlusive disease.
No full textIn the last two decades the endovascular treatment of peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD) has gained a widespread and predominant role. New technologies have developed in the last years as atherectomy devices, self expandible nitinol stents, drug eluting devices (stent and balloons), absorbable stents. In recent years, growing interest has been dedicated to laser technology due to device improvements and literature data reporting safety and efficacy of excimer laser. The role of this new endovascular technique for the treatment of atherosclerotic arterial diseases should be considered with regard to two fields of interest: the claudicatio intermittens (CI) and the critical limb ischemia (CLI). A 20-year history with medical lasers has proven that not all lasers are equal. Lasers used and studied in the late 1980s and 1990s had poor outcomes due to inappropriate laser selection and undefined laser techniques. Over the last 10 years, multicenter studies with the excimer laser confirm that case selection, appropriate utilization of equipment, application of safe lasing techniques, and knowledge of indications and contraindications, all contribute to the successful application of laser-assisted angioplasty in complex coronary and peripheral artery disease. If applied properly, the Excimer Laser is a useful technique to transform complex obstructive arterial disease into more treatable lesions, improving the results of endovascular treatment and lowering the threshold of intervention for ''untreatable'' patients. New larger studies are requested to assess the definitive role of this technique in PAD treatment and limb salvage. This review will discuss the Laser Phisics and application in PAD along with the clinical data available to support the Excimer Laser as a reliable technology for endovascular intervention
Tibioperoneal trunk pseudoaneurysm coil embolization
Full text linkIntroduction: Pseudoaneurysms of the tibioperoneal trunk are rare and can be limb threatening. There are various treatment options to seal pseudoaneuryms both percutaneously and via open surgery.
Case report: Description of the case of a large tibioperoneal trunk pseudoaneurysm that has been successfully treated by coil embolization in a patient with a previous endocarditis.
Conclusion: Endovascular treatment of pseudoaneurysm should be considered as an alternative treatment option to open surgery
Shockwave intravascular lithoplasty for the treatment of calcified carotid artery stenosis: A very early single-center experience
No full textEndovascular treatment of calcified carotid disease represents one of the main challenges for the interventionalists. Plaque calcium load is one of the most important factors affecting the risk of procedural complications. A new tool called Shockwave intravascular lithotripsy (S-IVL; Shockwave Medical, Inc.) has been recently approved for the treatment of heavily calcified coronary and lower limb arteries but minimal data exist about the treatment of carotid arteries. We report our early experience of carotid stenting using S-IVL. We report two cases of symptomatic patients with severely calcified carotid artery diseases who were turned down for vascular surgeries. The first case was successfully performed through radial access using a distal cerebral embolic protection device in the context of contralateral carotid occlusion. In the second case, a very tight and calcified left internal carotid artery stenosis was successfully treated through femoral access using a proximal cerebral protection device. In both cases, advanced imaging confirmed effective calcium debulking and good stent expansion after IVL treatment. S-IVL effectiveness basically resides in integrating the effect of balloon angioplasty with the calcium-disrupting power of sonic pressure waves. This could be able to minimize the risk of cerebral embolization due to aggressive conventional balloon predilatation or poststenting dilatation usually needed to obtain an adequate luminal gain in carotid stenting. According to our small case series, the use of S-IVL for the treatment of heavily calcified carotid artery lesions seems to be helpful in this particular setting
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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