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Biomedical subjects

M Bonet

Publications and source records attributed to M Bonet.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Prospective study on the usefulness of lung scan in patients with deep vein thrombosis of the lower limbs.

BACKGROUND: Asymptomatic pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common finding in patients with deep venous thrombosis (DVT) of the lower limbs, but the usefulness of seeking for silent PE in patients with acute DVT has not been evaluated. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This was a prospective study involving consecutive patients with acute symptomatic proximal DVT (confirmed by objective methods) and no clinical suspicion of PE. All patients underwent chest X-ray, ventilation-perfusion lung scan and arterial blood gases on admission, and received anticoagulant therapy. Those with scintigraphic evidence of PE underwent repeated lung scan and blood gases 7 days later. The aim of the study was to assess how many patients with silent PE develop symptoms while on heparin therapy, and in how many of them such symptoms are due to recurrent PE. RESULTS: 946 consecutive patients with acute, proximal DVT had no contraindications to full-dose anticoagulant therapy. Baseline lung scan revealed high-probability defects (silent PE) in 200 (21%). Seven of these 200 patients had symptomatic recurrences during the 7-day study period, and an inferior vena cava filter was inserted. Besides, 6 patients developed PE symptoms, but no new perfusion defects were found on repeated scan. They switched to coumarin therapy, and they did not develop any further complications. CONCLUSIONS: Lung scan in patients with symptomatic DVT and no clinical suspicion of PE may be useful, since some patients with silent PE may develop symptoms while on heparin therapy. Without a baseline scintigraphy all these patients would have been considered to have recurrent PE, and vena cava interruption could have been performed.

Adult↗

Acoustic analysis after radiotherapy in T1 vocal cord carcinoma: a new approach to the analysis of voice quality.

PURPOSE: The study of acoustic voice parameters (fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio) in extended vowel production, oral reading of a standard paragraph, spontaneous speech and a song in irradiated patients for Tis-T1 vocal cord carcinoma. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Eighteen male patients irradiated for Tis-T1 vocal cord carcinoma and a control group of 31 nonirradiated subjects of the same age were included in a study of acoustic voice analysis. The control group had been rigorously selected for voice quality and the irradiated group had previous history of smoking in two-thirds of the cases and a vocal cord biopsy. Radiotherapy patients were treated with a 6MV Linac receiving a total dose of 66 Gy, 2 Gy/day, with median treatment areas of 28 cm(2). Acoustic voice analysis was performed 1 year after radiotherapy, the voice of patients in extended vowel production, oral reading of a standard paragraph, spontaneous speech, and in a song was tape registered and analyzed by a Kay Elemetric's Computerized Speech Lab (model CSL# 4300). Fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio were obtained in each case. Mann Whitney analysis was used for statistical tests. RESULTS: The irradiated group presented higher values of fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio. Mann-Whitney analysis showed significant differences for fundamental frequency and jitter in vowel production, oral reading, spontaneous speech, and song. Shimmer only showed differences in vowel production and harmonics-to-noise ratio in oral reading and song. CONCLUSIONS: In our study only fundamental frequency and jitter showed significant increased values to the control group in all the acoustic situations. Sustained vowel production showed the worst values of the acoustic parameters in comparison with the other acoustic situations. This study seems to suggest that more work should be done in this field.

Aged↗

Better methods for solving parsimony and compatibility.

Evolutionary tree reconstruction is a challenging problem with important applications in biology and linguistics. In biology, one of the most promising approaches to tree reconstruction is to find the "maximum parsimony" tree, while in linguistics, the use of the "maximum compatibility" method has been very useful. However, these problems are NP-hard, and current approaches to solving these problems amount to heuristic searches through the space of possible tree topologies (a search which can, on large trees, take months to complete). In this paper, we present a new technique, Optimal Tree Refinement, for reconstructing very large trees. Our technique is motivated by recent experimental studies which have shown that certain polynomial time methods often return contractions of the true tree. We study the use of this technique in solving maximum parsimony and maximum compatibility, and present both hardness results and polynomial time algorithms.

Algorithms↗

Evaluation of dysphonia in a children's choir.

This study isolates the voice problems of 99 (40 male, 59 female) children choir singers (age range: 8-14), by applying and validating a simple method for classifying the singing voice. The prevalence of dysphonia was 20.2%. A singing range of fewer than 18 semitones is considered to suggest dysphonia (sensitivity of 80% and specificity of 95%). The validity of the method and its ease of application are discussed. We conclude that voice classification is necessary for all children who sing and that phoniatric examination of dysphonic children is imperative, with special attention given to those whose voices are changing.

Adolescent↗

Univariate and multivariate analyses of risk factors predisposing to auditory toxicity in patients receiving aminoglycosides.

Risk factors predisposing to auditory toxicity of aminoglycosides were analyzed from records of 187 patients enrolled in three prospective randomized trials comparing the toxicity of netilmicin, tobramycin, and amikacin. Patients were eligible if they received three or more days of therapy and at least two serial audiograms were available. The overall auditory toxicity rate was 9.6% (18 of 187). Auditory toxicity was detected in 4.4, 10.8, and 23.5% of patients given netilmicin, tobramycin, and amikacin, respectively (P = 0.05). In the univariate analysis, patients who developed auditory toxicity were significantly older (P = 0.01) and had a significantly higher (P = 0.04) percentage of trough levels of netilmicin or tobramycin above 2 mg/liter or amikacin above 5 mg/liter. In the final logistic regression model, only age was retained as independently influencing the development of auditory toxicity (P less than 0.00001). Conversely, factors that did not add significantly to the prediction of auditory toxicity were aminoglycoside serum levels, total aminoglycoside dose, duration of therapy, sex, peak temperature, presence of bacteremia, shock, liver cirrhosis, dehydration, previous otic pathology or renal failure, and development of renal toxicity. At least in certain populations, age is the most important predisposing factor for the development of auditory toxicity in patients receiving aminoglycosides.

Amikacin↗