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Introduction:The recently proposed YEARS algorithm was shown to safely exclude pulmonary embolism (PE) and reduce the use of computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA) among pregnant women with suspected PE. Our aim was to externally validate this finding. Methods:We performed a post hoc analysis of a prospective management outcome study for PE diagnosis in pregnant women. PE was diagnosed with an algorithm that combined the revised Geneva score, D-dimer testing, bilateral lower-limb compression ultrasonography, and CTPA. All women had a 3-month follow-up. All of the items necessary to use the YEARS algorithm were prospectively collected at the time of the study. Results:Of the 395 women included in the original study, 371 were available for the present analysis. The PE prevalence was 6.5%. Ninety-one women had no YEARS items, and 280 had one or more items. When the YEARS items were combined with D-dimer levels (<1000 ng/mL in women with no items, and <500 ng/mL in women with one or more items), 77 women (21%) met the criteria for PE exclusion and would

Introduction: Increasing female matriculation into medical school has shown an increase in women training in academic urology, but gender disparity still exists within this male-dominated field. This study aims to evaluate publication productivity and rank differences of Canadian female and male academic urologists. Methods: The Canadian Residency Matching Service (CaRMS) was used to compile a list of 12 Canadian accredited urology programs. Using each institution’s website, faculty members’ names, genders, academic positions, and leadership ranks were noted. SCOPUS© was consulted to tabulate the number of documents published, citations, and h-index of each faculty member. To account for temporal bias associated with the h-index, the m-quotient was also computed. Results: There was a significantly higher number of men (164, 88.17%) among academic faculty than women (22, 11.83%). As academic rank increased, the proportion of female urologists decreased. Overall, male urologists had higher academic ranks, h-index values, number of publications, and citations (p=0.038, p=0.0038, p=0.0011, and p=0.014, respectively). There was an insignificant difference between men and women with respect to their m-quotient medians (p=0.25). Conclusions: There is an increasing number of women completing residency in urology, although there are disproportionally fewer female urologists at senior academic positions. Significant differences were found in the h-index, publication count, and citation number between male and female urologists. When using the m-quotient to adjust for temporal bias, no significant differences were found between the gender in terms of academic output.

Membrane proteins are present in both cardiac T-tubule (TTM) and outer surface membrane (OSM), although at a different density. Classical pharmacology does not allow to explore the function of a membrane protein separately in OSM vs. TTM. Here, we developed a technology based on size exclusion to explore the function of β-adrenergic receptors (β-ARs) located in the OSM. We synthetized a PEG-Iso molecule by covalent linking between isoprenaline (Iso) and a 5000 Da PolyEthylene-Glycol (PEG). Using confocal microscopy, we show that PEGylation constrains molecules outside the T-tubule network. PEG-Iso produced similar effects as Iso on ICa,L, sarcomere shortening and Ca2+ transients. However, PEG-Iso increased [cAMP]i with a lower efficacy than Iso, produced a much lower stimulation of nuclear PKA activity than Iso but a larger stimulation of cytosolic PKA at equivalent levels of [cAMP]i. Our results show that activation of OSM β-ARs is sufficient to activate cytosolic PKA and excitation-contraction coupling, but insufficient to activate nuclear PKA or nuclear protein phosphorylation for which additional activation of TTM β-ARs is needed.