[Resuscitation efficacy of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in non-postcardiotomy adult patients with cardiac arrest]

Objective: To evaluate the resuscitation efficacy of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for non-postcardiotomy cardiac arrest adult patients post failed conventional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CCPR). Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of a total of 25 consecutive adults who suffered from non-postcardiotomy cardiac arrest and were treated with ECMO post failed CCPR in our hospital between January 2010 and January 2015. Inclusion criteria included: 18 to 75 years old; the duration from cardiac arrest to CCPR initiation<5 minutes; no recovery of spontaneous circulation within 10 min after implementation of standard CCPR, and the length of CCPR <90 minutes. Patients were divided into non-survival group (18 cases) and survival group (7 cases) based on their in-hospital outcome and the clinical characteristics were compared. Related factors of survival to discharge were analyzed by Spearman correlation analysis. Results: Majority of patients (84.0%(21/25)) developed cardiac arrest in our hospital, mostly due to acute myocardial infarction (80.0%(20/25)). The mean duration of CCPR prior to ECMO support was 40.0 (27.5, 72.0) minutes. The mean duration of ECMO support was 72.0 (47.5, 128.3) hours and 9 patients (36.0%) were successfully weaned. Intensive care unit stay was significantly shorter (3.0(1.8-7.8)days vs.16.0(11.0-37.0) days, P<0.01), mean blood pressure at 24 and 48 hours after ECMO initiation was significantly lower ((73.2±20.1)mmHg(1 mmHg=0.133 kPa) vs. (91.1±20.4)mmHg, P<0.05; (63.0±16.7)mmHg vs. (86.6±18.0 mmHg), P<0.05, respectively) and platelet count at 72 hours after extracorporeal support was significantly lower ((57.0±30.1)×10⁹/L vs. (97.3±31.5)×10⁹/L, P<0.05) in the non-survivor group than in survival group. Spearman correlation analysis demonstrated that mean arterial pressure at 24 hours (r=0.427, P<0.05) and 48 hours(r=0.558, P<0.05), and platelet count at 72 hours after extracorporeal support (r=0.577, P<0.05) were significantly correlated with survival to discharge. Conclusion: ECMO can be used as an effective alternative for refractory cardiac arrest in non-postcardiotomy adult patients.

In-line fiber-optic etalon formed by hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

A novel fiber-optic in-line etalon formed by splicing a section of hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HCPCF) in between two single-mode fibers is proposed and demonstrated, for the first time to our knowledge. Such a HCPCF-based etalon acts as an excellent optical waveguide to form a Fabry-Perot interferometer and hence allows the cavity length to be as long as several centimeters with good visibility as the transmission loss of the HCPCF is much smaller than that of a hollow core fiber; this offers great potential to generate a practical dense fiber-optic sensor network with spatial frequency division-multiplexing. This novel etalon is demonstrated for strain measurement, and the experimental results show that a good visibility of 0.3 and a strain accuracy of better than +/- 5 microepsilon are achieved.

Comparison of prototype and rote instruction of English names for Chinese visual characters

This study compared prototype and rote instruction of English names for Chinese visual characters. In the prototype condition, participants were taught the meaning of the prototype that served as the distinctive feature of multicomponent characters. In the rote condition, participants traced the character and wrote its translation. Participants learned more rapidly and maintained more words in the prototype condition.