Search results for "thing"
showing 10 items of 908 documents
Small airway disease (SAD) is associated with respiratory symptoms and relevant for therapy in early COPD
2020
Background: SAD is common in patients with COPD. Occurring early in the course of the disease, it is frequently missed by currently used diagnostic tests. Multiple breath washout (MBW) testing detects ventilation heterogeneity (VH) while oscillometry (OS) assesses peripheral obstruction, both associated with SAD. We therefore set out to evaluate the presence and symptoms of SAD in patients with early COPD. Methods: We prospectively evaluated 26 patients (FEV1 77±19% pred., 88% GOLD I/II). In an 8-week cross-over design, the effect of dual bronchodilatation (tiotropium/olodaterol, T/O) on lung function and symptoms (CAT) was compared to monotherapy (formoterol). Lung function was assessed by…
Immediate effects of the respiratory stimulation on ventilation parameters in ischemic stroke survivors: A randomized interventional study (CONSORT).
2019
Background: Post-stroke brain damage, which affects the central control of respiration, leads to various respiratory disorders. They can be caused by the weakening of the respiratory muscles and chest movements, which can indirectly contribute to an impairment of the ventilation function. The aim of the study is an objective assessment of the effect of a single-session intervention of respiratory stimulation through Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF) on chosen respiratory parameters and the following comparison of these changes with a group in which positioning was used (intra- and intergroup comparison). Methods: This was a randomized interventional study evaluating the respir…
Physiotherapy Intervention for Preventing the Respiratory Muscle Deterioration in Institutionalized Older Women With Functional Impairment
2013
Abstract Introduction In elderly seniors (>80 years), respiratory function may be compromised when, in addition to the presence of comorbidity and loss of mobility, there is also reduced respiratory muscle (RM) strength. The literature has shown that RM training could be an effective method to improve RM function and prevent clinical deterioration, particularly in population with RM weakness. The main purpose of this paper was to assess the effectiveness of RM training on the respiratory muscle strength and endurance of institutionalized elderly women with functional impairment. Method Fifty-four residents (mean=85 years, SD=6.7) were randomly assigned to either a control (n=27) or training…
Measuring lung function in asthmatic children: A spirometry and forced oscillation technique (FOT) comparison
2016
Background: Spirometry is the most common pulmonary function test used in asthma diagnosing. However, it requires good patient co-operation. FOT has gained increasing attention for the measurement of pulmonary function in children because it is performed at steady state breathing. Aim: To compare spirometry and FOT in order to discriminate severity of asthma according to GINA. Methods: Spirometry and FOT were performed in 176 out-patient asthmatic children (5-16 year), 100 (57%) with naive Persistent Asthma (PA) and 76 (43%) with Intermittent Asthma (IA), consecutively enrolled at the IBIM pediatric clinic. Two principal component analyses (PCA) were performed, the first (PCA1) based on FEV…
Quasi-interpolating and Smoothing Local Splines
2015
In this chapter, local quasi-interpolating and smoothing splines are described. Although approximation properties of local spline are similar to properties of the global interpolating and smoothing splines, their design does not require the IIR filtering of the whole data array. The computation of a local spline value at some point utilizes only a few adjacent grid samples. Therefore, local splines can be used for real-time processing of signals and for the design of FIR filter banks generating wavelets and wavelet frames (Chaps. 12 and 14). In the chapter, local splines of different orders are designed and their approximation properties are established which are compared with the propertie…
Right diaphragmatic injury and lacerated liver during a penetrating abdominal trauma: case report and brief literature review
2014
Introduction: Diaphragmatic injuries are rare consequences of thoracoabdominal trauma and they often occur in association with multiorgan injuries. The diaphragm is a difficult anatomical structure to study with common imaging instruments due to its physiological movement. Thus, diaphragmatic injuries can often be misunderstood and diagnosed only during surgical procedures. Diagnostic delay results in a high rate of mortality. Methods: We report the management of a clinical case of a 45-old man who came to our observation with a stab wound in the right upper abdomen. The type or length of the knife used as it was extracted from the victim after the fight. CT imaging demonstrated a right hem…
Interval estimation for the breakpoint in segmented regression: a smoothed score-based approach
2017
Summary This paper is concerned with interval estimation for the breakpoint parameter in segmented regression. We present score-type confidence intervals derived from the score statistic itself and from the recently proposed gradient statistic. Due to lack of regularity conditions of the score, non-smoothness and non-monotonicity, naive application of the score-based statistics is unfeasible and we propose to exploit the smoothed score obtained via induced smoothing. We compare our proposals with the traditional methods based on the Wald and the likelihood ratio statistics via simulations and an analysis of a real dataset: results show that the smoothed score-like statistics perform in prac…
Forecasting time series with missing data using Holt's model
2009
This paper deals with the prediction of time series with missing data using an alternative formulation for Holt's model with additive errors. This formulation simplifies both the calculus of maximum likelihood estimators of all the unknowns in the model and the calculus of point forecasts. In the presence of missing data, the EM algorithm is used to obtain maximum likelihood estimates and point forecasts. Based on this application we propose a leave-one-out algorithm for the data transformation selection problem which allows us to analyse Holt's model with multiplicative errors. Some numerical results show the performance of these procedures for obtaining robust forecasts.
Correlated randomness and switching phenomena
2010
One challenge of biology, medicine, and economics is that the systems treated by these serious scientific disciplines have no perfect metronome in time and no perfect spatial architecture—crystalline or otherwise. Nonetheless, as if by magic, out of nothing but randomness one finds remarkably fine-tuned processes in time and remarkably fine-tuned structures in space. Further, many of these processes and structures have the remarkable feature of “switching” from one behavior to another as if by magic. The past century has, philosophically, been concerned with placing aside the human tendency to see the universe as a fine-tuned machine. Here we will address the challenge of uncovering how, th…
Intensity estimation for inhomogeneous Gibbs point process with covariates-dependent chemical activity
2014
Recent development of intensity estimation for inhomogeneous spatial point processes with covariates suggests that kerneling in the covariate space is a competitive intensity estimation method for inhomogeneous Poisson processes. It is not known whether this advantageous performance is still valid when the points interact. In the simplest common case, this happens, for example, when the objects presented as points have a spatial dimension. In this paper, kerneling in the covariate space is extended to Gibbs processes with covariates-dependent chemical activity and inhibitive interactions, and the performance of the approach is studied through extensive simulation experiments. It is demonstr…