A comparison of caudal epidural bupivacaine with adrenaline and bupivacaine with adrenaline and pethidine for operative and postoperative analgesia in infants and children

This study compares the effectiveness of two drug combinations--(a) bupivacaine with adrenaline and (b) bupivacaine with adrenaline and pethidine--on operative and postoperative pain relief when administered by the caudal route in infants and children. A randomised controlled trial was conducted on fifty children below the age of twelve years: 25 children were randomly allocated to each group. Both groups had a significant period of analgesia in the postoperative period. None of the children in either group required parenteral analgesia. Though the group with pethidine had a longer duration of analgesia and sedation, the very high incidence of vomiting and delay in urination observed in this group would preclude the use of pethidine routinely. No respiratory depression was seen in either group.

An experimental study on effect of process parameters in deep drawing using Taguchi technique

The effects of various deep drawing process parameters were determined by experimental study with the use of Taguchi fractional factorial design and analysis of variance for AA6111 Aluminum alloy. The optimum process parameters were determined based on their influence on the thickness variation at different regions of the blank material. Three important process parameters i.e., punch nose radius, die shoulder radius and blankholder force were investigated in this study. Plan of experiments based on Taguchi’s technique were used for acquiring the data. An orthogonal array, the signal to noise ratio and the analysis of variance were employed to investigate the deep drawability characteristics. Influence on thickness due to variation of these parameters was individually evaluated in terms of percentage. The results showed that the blankholder force (56.98%) was the most significant parameter followed by punch nose radius (30.12%) and the least influence (12.90%) was with die profile radius.Keywords: Axisymmetric deep drawing, Taguchi method, orthogonal array, S/N ratio, anova