Diagnostic accuracy of D-dimer assay in detection of pulmonary embolism in patients presenting in emergency department

Background: Pulmonary embolism is the lethal condition that is associated with higher rate of mortality in cardia patients. The diagnosis of the acute pulmonary embolism is frequently observed in patients presenting in emergency department or during hospitalization. Level of D-dimer may be assessed by blood test to help the physicians to diagnose the thrombosis. Literature showed variable evidence regarding predictive accuracy of D-dimer for detection of pulmonary embolism. So to get local data, we conducted this study. Aim: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of D-dimer assay for detection of pulmonary embolism in patients of acute myocardial infarction presenting in emergency department taking CTPA as gold standard Methods: Cross - sectional study conducted in Cardiology Department , Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Lahore for a period of six months from 1-9-2018 to 1-3-2019. One hundred patients, fulfilled the selection criteria were enrolled from emergency. Then blood sample was taken for evaluation of D-dimer level. Reports were checked and D-dimer level was noted. Pulmonary embolism was labeled as positive on D-dimer, if D-dimer level ≥500 and was labeled as negative if D-dimer level <500. Then all patients underwent CTPA. Pulmonary embolism labeled as positive if there was mass filling defects detected as dark spot on angiogram. All the data was collected by using the proforma. Data analysis as done in SPSS v. 21. Results: The mean age of patients was 54.03±10.26years. There were 40 (40) males and 60 (60%) females. The mean BMI of patients was 27.57±4.35kg/m2. There were 46 (46%) patients with diabetes mellitus while 61 (61%) patients had hypertension. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and diagnostic accuracy of D-dimer were 82.6%, 72.2%, 71.7%, 83.0% and 77.0%, respectively taking CTPA as gold standard. Conclusion: Thus the D-dimer is accurate enough that it can help to predict pulmonary embolism and can help to prevent at least negative cases to undergo CTPA. Keywords: Acute myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, D-dimer, computed tomography pulmonary angiography

New species of Rineloricaria (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) from the Paranaíba River basin, Brazil

Rineloricaria is a genus of armored catfish encompassing 67 valid species that are widely distributed throughout the Neotropical region. A new species of Rineloricaria is described from the Paranaíba River, Upper Paraná River basin, southeastern Brazil. Rineloricaria rodriquezae sp. n. is distinguished from its congeners by the combination of the following characters: caudal-fin color pattern with basal dark spot and subterminal dark bar on branched rays interspersed with a hyaline area; five series of lateral plates with two keeled in the mid-dorsal series around the insertion of the first ray of dorsal fin; and unbranched caudal-fin ray extended as long filaments.

CSS J075415.6+191052 and NW Leo: two contact binaries at different evolutionary stages

Multi-color light curves of CSS J075415.6+191052 and NW Leo are presented and the photometric solutions suggest that CSS J075415.6+191052 is a low mass ratio (q=0.178) and slightly deep contact binary (f=34.9%), while NW Leo with high mass ratio (q=0.707) and shallow degree of contact (f=2.3%). For CSS J075415.6+191052, the RI light curves show weakening around the left shoulder of secondary minimum, which indicates that there may be a dark spot on the secondary component. However, the light curves of BV bands are totally symmetric. It is unreasonable if the dark spot is caused by magnetic activity or mass transfers between two components. Therefore, the weakening of the light curves in this contact binary is caused by something else. A possible explanation is mass transferring from primary component to common convective envelope through the inner Lagrangian point, and this part of the mass, for some reason, weakens RI bands of light from secondary component. O - C analysis of NW Leo reveals a cyclic period change with a modulation period of 4.7 years, which may be caused by the light travel time effect of a third body. The positions of CSS J075415.6+191052 and NW Leo in P - J_{orb}' diagram suggest that the former is more evolved, which is in agreement with their photometric solutions. In the current stage, CSS J075415.6+191052 is dominated by the angular momentum loss theory, but NW Leo mainly follow the thermal relaxation oscillation theory.

The Propagation of Vortex Beams in Random Mediums

Vortex beams acquire increasing attention due to their unique properties. These beams have an annular spatial profile with a dark spot at the center, the so-called phase singularity. This singularity defines the helical phase structure which is related to the topological charge value. Topological charge value allows vortex beams to carry orbital angular momentum. The existence of orbital angular momentum offers a large capacity and high dimensional information processing which make vortex beams very attractive for free-space optical communications. Besides that, these beams are well capable of reducing turbulence-induced scintillation which leads to better system performance. This chapter introduces the research conducted up to date either theoretically or experimentally regarding vortex beam irradiance, scintillation, and other properties while propagating in turbulent mediums.

Review: Saffron’s Activity as an Active Ingredient in Cosmetics

Saffron (Crocus sativus) is a plant that has been widely used in Asia, especially in the health sector. This can be related to other than that saffron is also known for its use as a cosmetic because Saffron has various kinds of pharmacological activities beneficial to human skin. Today's cosmetic users prefer cosmetics with herbal or natural ingredients, especially in Indonesia. This happens because it is considered that herbal cosmetics are safer and harmless in long-term use. Therefore, it is necessary to do related act ivities of saffron as a cosmetic ingredient. This is narrative research where the data is obtained from PubMed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar with keywords Saffron, Saffron for cosmetics, and others. There were eight references, with inclusion criteria being national and international journals and national websites published in 2011-2021, especially regarding the study of saffron activity as an ingredient for cosmetics. Then the data is analyzed narratively. It was found that Saffron (Crocus sativus) contains compounds that have a cosmetic activity such as safranal which can be used as a perfume, crocin as an antioxidant and as anti-dark spot, crocin, safranal, and crocetin as anti-UV, crocin, and crocetin as an anti-inflammatory and as coloring pigment in cosmetics, vitamin C, flavonoids and zinc as a face toner, kaempferol, crocin and crocetin as anti-wrinkle, zeaxanthin, lycopene, carotene, crocetin, picrocrocin, kaempferol, and crocin as anti-aging. Saffron (Crocus sativus) has various beneficial activities for the skin, so it can be used as an ingredient in making cosmetics.Keywords : Cosmetics, Herbal, Saffron, Herbal Cosmetics, Active Ingredient

A new, fluorescence-based method for visualizing the pseudopupil and assessing optical acuity in the dark compound eyes of honeybees and other insects

Recent interest in applying novel imaging techniques to infer optical resolution in compound eyes underscores the difficulty of obtaining direct measures of acuity. A widely used technique exploits the principal pseudopupil, a dark spot on the eye surface representing the ommatidial gaze direction and the number of detector units (ommatidia) viewing that gaze direction. However, dark-pigmented eyes, like those of honeybees, lack a visible pseudopupil. Attempts over almost a century to estimate optical acuity in this species are still debated. Here, we developed a method to visualize a stable, reliable pseudopupil by staining the photoreceptors with fluorescent dyes. We validated this method in several species and found it to outperform the dark pseudopupil for this purpose, even in pale eyes, allowing more precise location of the gaze centre. We then applied this method to estimate the sampling resolution in the frontal part of the eye of the honeybee forager. We found a broad frontal acute zone with interommatidial angles below 2° and a minimum interommatidial angle of 1.3°, a broader, sharper frontal acute zone than previously reported. Our study provides a new method to directly measure the sampling resolution in most compound eyes of living animals.

Spectroscopic evidence for a large spot on the dimming Betelgeuse

During October 2019 and March 2020, the luminous red supergiant Betelgeuse demonstrated an unusually deep minimum of its brightness. It became fainter by more than one magnitude and this is the most significant dimming observed in the recent decades. While the reason for the dimming is debated, pre-phase of supernova explosion, obscuring dust, or changes in the photosphere of the star were suggested scenarios. Here, we present spectroscopic studies of Betelgeuse using high-resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio near-infrared spectra obtained at Weihai Observatory on four epochs in 2020 covering the phases of during and after dimming. We show that the dimming episode is caused by the dropping of its effective temperature by at least 170 K on 2020 January 31, that can be attributed to the emergence of a large dark spot on the surface of the star.

The first experience of using autologous conditioned plasma in the surgery of complete macular ruptures in the Voronezh Regional Clinical Ophthalmological Hospital

Purpose. To evaluate the effectiveness of the use of autologous conditioned plasma in the surgical treatment of complete macular ruptures. Material and methods. During 2021, 4 patients with complete macular rupture were operated on at the center of ophthalmic microsurgical high-tech care of the Voronezh Regional Clinical Ophthalmological Hospital using autologous conditioned plasma. The BCVA was 0.01–0.3. The diameter of the macular breaks ranged from 214 to 817 µm. Blood samples were taken from the patients before the operation. Autologous conditioned plasma was prepared by centrifuging the patient's blood in a patented Arthrex ACP (Germany) double-circuit syringe. Surgical treatment was carried out according to the standard technique - microinvasive three-port 25G vitrectomy with removal of the BMR to the extreme periphery and IPM in the central part of the retina. After tamponade of the vitreous cavity with air, autologous conditioned plasma was injected intravitreally into the central and peripheral rupture in several layers until a visual film appeared. The follow-up period for patients after surgical treatment was 2 months. Results. When examining patients after 1 week, the edges of the macular foramen remained closed in all cases. All studied patients noted an improvement in visual functions, the absence of metamorphopsia, a decrease in the dark "spot" in front of the eye, visual acuity ranged from 0.2 to 0.7 (0.5 + 0.2) after surgery for a complete macular rupture, and 0.02 in patients after surgery for recurrent macular rupture. After 1 month, the visual acuity after the full macular rupture was repaired after 1 month was 0.3–0.8 (0.6 ± 0.2), which was significantly higher than the preoperative values, and did not change in the patient with recurrent macular rupture. Two months later - the results of optical coherence tomography and visometry without negative dynamics. Conclusions. The early results of clinical observation confirmed the high efficiency of the use of autologous conditioned plasma in the surgical treatment of complete macular ruptures, which allows to obtain high functional results and anatomical closure of the macular rupture, to increase the efficiency and safety of rehabilitation. Key words: macular rupture, autologous conditioned plasma.