, Abstract-Background: The traditional intraoral manual reduction of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dislocations is time consuming, difficult, and at times ineffective, and commonly requires conscious sedation. Objectives: We describe a novel technique for the reduction of acute nontraumatic TMJ dislocations in the emergency department (ED). Methods: This study was a prospective convenience sample population during a 3-year period at two university teaching-hospital EDs where acute nontraumatic TMJ dislocations were reduced utilizing our syringe technique. Demographics, mechanism, duration of dislocation, and reduction time were collected. Briefly, the ''syringe'' technique is a hands-free technique that requires a syringe to be placed between the posterior molars as they slide over the syringe to glide the anteriorly displaced condyle back into its normal anatomical position. Procedural sedation or intravenous analgesia is not required. Results: Of the 31 patients, the mean age was 38 years. Thirty patients had a successful reduction (97%). The majority of dislocations were reduced in <1 min (77%). The two most common mechanisms for acute TMJ dislocations were due to chewing (n = 19; 61%) and yawning (n = 8; 29%). There were no recurrent dislocations at 3-day followup. Conclusion: We describe a novel technique for the reduction of the acutely nontraumatic TMJ dislocation in the ED. It is simple, fast, safe, and effective. Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc.

No abstract

Software-defined radio requires the combination of software-based signal processing and the enabling hardware components. In this paper, we present an overview of the criteria for such platforms and the current state of development and future trends in this area. This paper will also provide details of a high-performance flexible radio platform called the maynooth adaptable radio system (MARS) that was developed to explore the use of software-defined radio concepts in the provision of infrastructure elements in a telecommunications application, such as mobile phone basestations or multimedia broadcasters.

We evaluated in 74 patients with resectable primary gastric carcinoma, the prognostic value of the preoperative circulating serum levels of CEA and TAG-72. Serum levels of CEA were above the cutoff level of 6 ng/ml in 18.9% of patients; TAG-72 levels were higher than 6 U/ml in 31% of patients. Pretreatment mean CEA levels were significantly lower (p < 0.01) in patients with stage I tumors (2.9 +/- 0.3 ng/ml) than in those with more advanced tumors (stage II: 14.5 +/- 6.8 ng/ml; stage III-IV: 6.8 +/- 1.5 ng/ml). Similarly, significant differences in mean TAG-72 serum levels were found between stage I (3.5 +/- 1.8 U/ml) and stage II and stage III-IV (30.4 +/- 20.7 U/ml and 26.1 +/- 9.7 U/ml, respectively) (p < 0.05). In addition, TAG-72 levels were also higher in poorly differentiated and moderately differentiated tumors (38.5 +/- 20.1 U/ml and 23.1 +/- 9.4 U/ml, respectively) than in well differentiated tumors (4.4 +/- 0.9 U/ml) (p < 0.05). The results further indicated that high preoperative serum levels of CEA predicted shorter relapse-free survival duration (p < 0.01), and that high TAG-72 levels were associated with shorter relapse-free and overall survival (p < 0.0001 and p < 0.0005, respectively). In addition, separate Cox multivariate analysis showed that preoperative TAG-72 was, after stage, the strongest factor to predict both relapse-free and overall survival (p < 0.0001 and p < 0.005, respectively) in patients with gastric cancer.

No abstract