No abstract

Patient vital sign monitoring within hospitals requires the use of non-invasive sensors that are hardwired to bedside monitors. This set-up is cumbersome, forcing the patient to be confined to his hospital bed thereby not allowing him to move around freely within the hospital premises. This paper addresses the use of wireless sensor networks for monitoring patient vital sign data in a hospital setting. Crossbow MICAz motes have been used to design a robust mesh network that routes patient data to a remote base station within the hospital premises. A hospital care giver can have access to this data at any point in time and doesn't have to be physically present in the patient's room to review the readings. The network infrastructure nodes are self-powered and draw energy from overhead 34W fluorescent lights via solar panels. The sensor nodes can be interfaced to a variety of vital sign sensors such as electrocardiograms (ECGs), pulse-oximeters and blood pressure (BP) sensors. In order to verify a completely functioning system, a commercial BP/heart-rate monitor (BPM) was interfaced to a wireless sensor node. The sensor node controls the BPM to initiate a reading, then collects the data and forwards it to the base station. An attractive graphical user interface (GUI) was designed to store and display patient data on the base station PC. The set-up was found to be extremely robust with low power consumption.

Advancements are being made towards a cheap and effective means for health monitoring. A mobile monitoring system is proposed for monitoring a bicycle rider using light weight, low power wireless sensors. Biometric and environmental information pertaining to the bicycle rider is captured, transmitted to, and stored in a remote database with little user interaction required. Remote users have real time access to the captured information through a web application. Possible applications for this system include the monitoring of a soldier in the battlefield and the monitoring of a patient during an ambulance ride.

In a study of bone marrow aspiration smears, Wittchow et al. (Mod Pathol 1992;5:555-558) described a highly characteristic finding, paranuclear blue inclusions (PBIs), found almost exclusively in cases of metastatic small cell undifferentiated carcinoma (SCUC). PBIs are 1-4 microns, light blue, cytoplasmic inclusions best visualized with Romanowsky-type stains. These inclusions are most easily found indenting the nuclei within clusters of closely opposed tumor cells. In the current study air-dried fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) smears from 146 primary and metastatic small cell and non-small cell adult and childhood malignancies were reviewed. PBIs were found in 28/32 (88%) of SCUC but were observed in only 4/44 (9%) non-small cell carcinomas, 2/21 (9.5%) lymphomas, 1/8 (12.5%) melanomas, 0/14 sarcomas, and 6/27 (22%) small round cell neoplasms. These results suggest that the presence of PBIs in air-dried FNAB smears of adult neoplasms, while not pathognamonic of SCUC, are a diagnostically useful finding. PBIs may be seen in a variety of different childhood small round cell neoplasms which limits their utility in this setting. The recognition of PBIs is most important to the cytologist who may not have access to ancillary studies, such as immunohistochemistry and electron microscopy.

The fine needle aspiration (FNA) cytology of a recurrent multifocal extracardiac adult rhabdomyoma is described, and the literature is reviewed. The patient presented with dysphagia and bilateral palpable neck masses 21 yr after resection of a rhabdomyoma of the tongue. The clinical differential diagnoses included ptotic submandibular glands and lymphadenopathy. The aspiration smears and cytospin preparations contained large polygonal cells with abundant granular cytoplasm with indistinct borders and uniform, peripherally located nuclei. Cross-striations were identified within the cytoplasm of some cells on Papanicolaou and modified Wright-Giemsa stains. This case represents only the fourth description of the cytology of this entity and the first reported case of a recurrence diagnosed by FNA. The characteristic cytomorphologic features enabled a definitive diagnosis to be made 21 yr after the original resection, sparing a poor-risk patient a debilitating surgical procedure for a benign, slow-growing neoplasm.