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Background and purpose Pulmonary homograft stenosis can appear in long-term follow-up after Ross intervention. Our aim was to describe the incidence, clinical impact and predictors of homograft stenosis and reintervention after the Ross procedure in a prospective series in a tertiary referral hospital after 21 years followup. Methods From 1997 to 2009, 107 patients underwent the Ross procedure (mean age: 30 ± 11 years; 69% men; 21 aged 36 mmHg) and surgical or percutaneous homograft reintervention. Results At the end of follow-up (21 years, median: 17 years, interquartile rank 12-19 years), echocardiographic and clinical data were available in 95 (89%) and 105 (98%) patients, respectively: 28/95 (29%) patients developed homograft stenosis and 13/105 (12%) patients underwent diferent homograft reintervention procedures (five patients underwent surgical replacement, four received a percutaneous pulmonary valve and one needed stent implantation). The other three patients underwent two or even three consecutive procedures in follow-up; two died because of complications after percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation and other one after surgical replacement. Rates of survival free from homograft stenosis and reintervention at the end of the follow-up were 71% and 88%, respectively. Younger age, and especially being part of paediatric group ( time predicted worse survival free from homograft stenosis (hazard ratio [HR] 3.88, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.78-8,43; p = 0.001), although there were no significant differences regarding reintervention (HR 1.54, [CI] 95% 0.42-5.58, p = 0.52). We found no significant association of this outcome with previous cardiac surgery, donor age, donor or recipient sex, homograft size, time of freezing or congenital aetiology. Conclusions After 21 years follow-up, incidence of homograft stenosis and reintervention after the Ross procedure were 29% and 12%, respectively; three patients had a reintervention-related death. Younger recipient age at Ross procedure was associated with a higher rate of stenosis.

Background Autograft regurgitation and the need of autograft reintervention are possible complications of Ross procedure. Purpose Our Aim was to identify rates of autograft degeneration, reintervention and predictive factors valvular disease in a prospective series of a reference cardiovascular surgery hospital. Methods Since November 1997 to July 2009, a total of 107 patients diagnosed of aortic valvular disease requiring surgical treatment underwent Ross surgery (mean age 30 ± 11 years, 69% male, 21 patients Results At the end of follow-up (21 years, median: 17 years, interquartile rank 12-19 years), echocardiographic and clinical data were available in 95 (89%) and 105 (98%) patients, respectively. 30 patients (32%) developed at least moderate aortic regurgitation and 18 of them (17%) required autograft reintervention. Probability of survival free from at least moderate autograft regurgitation and reintervention at the end of follow up was 71% and 83% respectively. Two patients died because of reintervention related complications. A larger native pulmonary annulus size was the only factor, associated to autograft reintervention (HR 1.24 95% [CI] 1.04-1.48, p = 0.01) and at least moderate autograft regurgitation (HR 1.19 95% [CI] 1.03-1.37, p = 0.02). Autograft reintervention was also associated to intervention in the learning curve period (first 12 cases, HR 3.78, [CI] 95% 1.42-10.08, p = 0.008). We found no significant association of these outcomes with previous cardiac surgery, age, sex, aetiology of aortic lesion or native aortic annulus diameter. Conclusion At long term follow-up after Ross procedure, 32% of patients developed at least moderate autograft regurgitation and 17% required autograft reintervention. A larger size of the native pulmonary annulus and intervention in the learning curve period were associated with the need of autograft surgery in the long term follow up.

The productivity and revenue of a company depend clearly on the correct corporate decision making and the management of productive data. Since most industries want speed and impact in their systems, the implementation of an IoT network manages to connect both field-mounted devices and sensors, as well as automated devices such as robots, which provides a considerable advantage within the planning. In this paper, two conventional IoT communication protocols are compared, such as the AMQP and CoAP, both within an automated system, making use of low-cost devices such as RaspBerry cards. The results obtained show that the CoAP protocol is designed to be so small that it fits inside a microcontroller, however, it does not provide satisfactory communication speed, but it can be fully applied in cyber-physical environments, in another aspect the AMQP protocol is more complex, there is no official support and you need bigger installation packages; but it provides a higher communication speed. In the present paper, analyze these behaviors and other questions with respect to both IoT protocols, how and why they should be implemented in an automated system.

Current industrial needs are focused in the generation of agile, flexible, and customizable manufacturing systems. To be able to cope with the high production diversities and the frequent demand changes of the market, enterprises tend to implement modular manufacturing processes. In this type of intelligent processes, robotic cells are usually integrated to perform complex manipulation and transportation tasks. New generation industrial robots are built incorporating special processing units which can operate under embedded software. This characteristic allows robots to be compatible with the automation standard IEC-61499. It proposes a generic distributed architecture for the generation of flexible and modular production systems, with the requirement of using controller devices which can work under an embedded software. This paper proposes the development of a low-cost robotic controller compatible with IEC-61499. The system is based on the use of a robotic cell to wield elements in a modular manufacturing line. The cell is composed by a YouBot Robotic Arm operating under the control of the development board Raspberry Pi 3B.

Specular microscopy can provide a non-invasive morphological analysis of the cornea endothelial cell layer. A variety of analysis programs are available to determine corneal endothelial quality. The flex-center endothelial analysis method (Konan Inc) is a newer technique including the outermost digitized cells and thus increases the number of cells for analysis. The aim of this study is to analyze whether the new flex-center method, increases the possibilities of corneal endothelium evaluation before implants. For this purpose 67 corneas were studied by both methods at the Eye Bank of the Tissue Establishment of Córdoba. Although we have found differences in the resulting of number of cells in the area analysed, no significant differences were found with respect to the endothelial cell count, coefficient of variation cell area, and the percentage of hexagonal cells recorded. Based on this data, both methods can be used satisfactorily in eye banking.

In recent years, carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) mirrors been proposed for use in future imaging satellites. Compared to traditional glass-based mirrors, CFRP mirrors offer reduced manufacturing times, lower coefficients of thermal expansion, lower areal density, and higher strength-to-weight ratios. Shorter manufacturing times promise to reduce program schedule requirements and cost. These advantages come at the expense of surface quality, which results in wavefront errors that are outside of the diffraction limit for optical imaging. To compensate for the reduced surface quality of CFRP mirrors, a deformable mirror (DM) is required in the optical path. During this research, the surface quality of a CFRP mirror was evaluated to establish a root-mean-square (RMS) error threshold for the DM corrections. An integral DM control law that employed a constrained least-squares solution was utilized to reduce the overall system wavefront error to below the specified CFRP error threshold. The application of this control law yielded a 38% reduction in RMS wavefront error (as compared to the CFRP error threshold), thus reducing the CFRP RMS surface performance requirements by the same amount. Reducing the surface performance requirements of CFRP mirrors is a critical step toward employing these mirrors in future imaging satellites.

Quality control and standardized preservation methods are essential in the field of transplantation. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has established a common set of manufacturing, trade and communications standards that are applicable worldwide and that provide the basis of a quality plan for Tissuebreak Banks.

In order to guarantee the required level of quality for our BoneTissue Banking, we evaluated a new CE marked container (CELLFLEX MacoPharma), for packing, transport, processing and storage of bones for therapeutic use. The use of CE marked containers is mandatory for organ and tissue containers (Medical Device Directive 93/42). We carried out a three-phase study: (1)Evaluation, (2) Implementation, (3)Audit The product was evaluated for the following criteria:Dash mechanical resistance, Dash air tightness, Dash fragility, Dash capacity. No damage was observed after the storage period, even after immersion in liquid nitrogen. No breakages were observed after provoked impact tests (pots dropped onto the floor). The pot capacity evaluation showed that the inner pot volume (approximately 500 ml) permits adequate storage of tendons and the majority of bone allografts. In conclusion, this evaluation has shown that the CELLFLEX kit is suitable for long duration preservation of bone allografts even at very low temperature conditions (vapour phase nitrogen). Its format and structure permit preservation of most bone allografts.

Removal of the meniscus leads to progressive degenerative arthritis of the knee on a long-term basis; therefore, meniscal allograft transplantation has been proposed as an alternative to meniscectomy. Preservation methods are required to build up operational stocks and to provide living grafts of a practical size at the right time for patients. Methods for meniscus preservation have been published, and relevant literature confirms that using standard cryopreservation, the chondrocyte survival in situ is inadequate and extremely variable and the cryoinjury mechanisms are not completely established. The aim of the present study is to further investigate possible cellular injury caused by cryopreservation by analysing apoptosis and ultrastructural damage to menisci.Seven human menisci that were cryopreserved by standard method were used. All tissue samples were processed simultaneously for routine light microscopy, scanning and transmission electron microscopy as well as apoptosis assessment by the use of ISOL method.With respect to cellularity, significant differences (P 0.05) between the fresh (14.6 ± 3.5) (mean ± SD) and cryopreserved menisci (9.2 ± 2.8) (mean ± SD) were observed. Apoptosis using ISOL method was observed in fibrochondrocytes of fresh and cryopreserved menisci. The quantitative analysis revealed significant differences (P 0.05) between fresh meniscus samples, where the apoptotic index was 0.8 ± 2.3% (mean ± SD), and cryopreserved meniscus samples, where this index was 50 ± 18.1% (mean ± SD).The results suggest that apoptosis occurs during meniscus cryopreservation. The major findings of this study are cellular damage in meniscus cryopreservation suggesting apoptosis-mediated cell loss. The findings reported herein encourage to further investigations in preservation procedures to enhance maximum long-term clinical survival.

This study evaluates the contact system, coagulation inhibitors and fibrinolysis in 23 full-term newborns with sepsis (8 with septic shock). The results were compared with a group of 20 healthy newborns. Blood samples were obtained at the time of clinical diagnosis and 3 days after the antibiotic therapy was started. The results showed that: severe infection was associated with activation of the contact system, depletion of anticoagulant proteins and elevation of C4b-binding protein levels. There was a shift in protein S to the complexed inactive form, and the thrombin-antithrombin complexes increased. These changes occurred in parallel to both activation and inhibition of fibrinolysis. These changes were more pronounced in the septic shock patients than in nonshock neonates. After therapy, this procoagulant state decreased among survivor patients while in those who died, the abnormalities in coagulation did not improve. Our study suggests that neonatal sepsis induces a hypercoagulable state that persists in nonsurvivor neonates despite a correct treatment.

This study analyzed the coagulation changes in twenty patients after orthotopic liver transplantation. The procoagulant, anticoagulant, and fibrinolytic systems were studied during the first two postoperative weeks. Within the first postoperative day all extrinsic and intrinsic pathway factors became normal except factors IX, VII, and X, which recovered within the next 24 hr. Of interest are the changes in factor VIII, which reached a high concentration with an increase in its antigenic fraction during the study. However, coagulation inhibitors showed a different pattern. In fact, antithrombin III (AT-III) and protein C (PC) needed from 7 to 14 days to reach normal values. Total protein S (TPS) and free protein S (FPS) did not recover until day 7, whereas heparin cofactor II (HC-II) remained at subnormal levels throughout the study. Thrombin-antithrombin III complex (TAT) values were strikingly elevated in the immediate postoperative period. Fibrinolysis parameters showed plasminogen (PL) levels in the normal range until day 4. Antiplasmin (AP) followed a curve parallel to that of plasminogen but its levels were higher during this observation period. Similarly the initial elevation in plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 endothelial type (PAI-1) levels remained high until days 4 and 7. In summary, it can be concluded that during the postoperative phase after OLT a hypercoagulable state is developed as a result of diminished anticoagulant and fibrinolytic activity. This coagulation might be a nontechnical factor contributing to the thrombotic vascular complications of some liver recipients.

DDT and Lindane (gamma-HCH) which were used until 1999 in Mexico, have provided great benefits in the combat of vectors that spread infection-borne diseases and in agriculture for crop protection. The persistence in the environment and their accumulative properties results in bioconcentration in lipid rich tissues of the human body that reflect the extent of environmental pollution. Human adipose tissue samples were taken during 2009 from abdominal cavities of 69 pregnant women by cesarean surgery and from 34 samples of control donors by autopsy in Veracruz State. The samples were analyzed by gas chromatography with ECD. The results of mean levels (mg/kg on fat basis) were higher in controls compared to pregnant women beta-HCH 0.064 vs 0.027; pp'DDE 1.187 vs. 0.745; op'DDT 0.016 vs. 0.011; pp'DDT 0.117 vs. 0.099 and Sigma-DDT 1.337 vs. 0.854. The pregnant women group was divided according to age: up to 20, 20-30, and more than 30 years, and presented an increase for the more persistent pesticides with age in terms of mean concentrations and a more pronounced higher correlation in medians levels. Pairing Body Mass Index to organochlorine pesticide mean levels revealed no correlation between these factors in pregnant women.

A 32-year-old male with febrile ulceronecrotic Mucha-Habermann disease (FUMHD) responsive to methotrexate is reported. This is a severe variant of pityriasis lichenoides et varioliformis acuta characterized by the acute onset of a widespread ulceronecrotic cutaneous eruption together with high fever and systemic involvement. To our knowledge, only 13 patients with FUMHD have been reported to date.

The objective is to compare stay in surgery monitored with oesophageal Doppler with unmonitored.

Chagas' disease (American trypanosomiasis) is a very uncommon disease in non-endemic areas. A few cases in immunosuppressed patients have been reported in America. This report describes, to our knowledge, the first fatal case of acute Chagas' disease in Europe following bone marrow transplantation.