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Objective To study the role of plasma exchange combined with continuous blood purification in the treatment of refractory Kawasaki disease shock syndrome (KDSS). Methods A total of 35 children with KDSS who were hospitalized in the Department of Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Hunan Children's Hospital, from January 2019 to August 2022 were included as subjects. According to whether plasma exchange combined with continuous veno-venous hemofiltration dialysis was performed, they were divided into a purification group with 12 patients and a conventional group with 23 patients. The two groups were compared in terms of clinical data, laboratory markers, and prognosis. Results Compared with the conventional group, the purification group had significantly shorter time to recovery from shock and length of hospital stay in the pediatric intensive care unit, as well as a significantly lower number of organs involved during the course of the disease (P<0.05). After treatment, the purification group had significant reductions in the levels of interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, heparin-binding protein, and brain natriuretic peptide (P<0.05), while the conventional group had significant increases in these indices after treatment (P<0.05). After treatment, the children in the purification group tended to have reductions in stroke volume variation, thoracic fluid content, and systemic vascular resistance and an increase in cardiac output over the time of treatment. Conclusions Plasma exchange combined with continuous veno-venous hemofiltration dialysis for the treatment of KDSS can alleviate inflammation, maintain fluid balance inside and outside blood vessels, and shorten the course of disease, the duration of shock and the length of hospital stay in the pediatric intensive care unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is experimentally demonstrated that the electric field drives the grain‐boundary (GB) migration in ceramics, but this has not been interpreted mechanistically. This work develops a phase field model to study the GB migration in alumina (Al2O3) and validate through the comparison with previous experiments. Results show that the GBs move to the small grain domain. Under an electric field in the positive bias direction, GB migration is enhanced, whereas the migration to the small grain domain is inhibited under the electric field in the negative bias direction. The enhancement or inhibition effect becomes more pronounced with increasing the electric field. The high negative bias induces decrease in the GB migration velocity even with the migration direction altering. It is revealed that GB migrations are dominated by the competitive effect between the curvature and electric field driving forces, and an analytical expression of the critical electric field is derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]