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Showing papers by "The Chinese University of Hong Kong published in 1995"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: By partitioning the range of the received signal-to-noise ratio into a finite number of intervals, FSMC models can be constructed for Rayleigh fading channels and the validity and accuracy of the model are confirmed by the state equilibrium equations and computer simulation.
Abstract: The authors first study the behavior of a finite-state channel where a binary symmetric channel is associated with each state and Markov transitions between states are assumed. Such a channel is referred to as a finite-state Markov channel (FSMC). By partitioning the range of the received signal-to-noise ratio into a finite number of intervals, FSMC models can be constructed for Rayleigh fading channels. A theoretical approach is conducted to show the usefulness of FSMCs compared to that of two-state Gilbert-Elliott channels. The crossover probabilities of the binary symmetric channels associated with its states are calculated. The authors use the second-order statistics of the received SNR to approximate the Markov transition probabilities. The validity and accuracy of the model are confirmed by the state equilibrium equations and computer simulation. >

1,742 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Empirical findings and theoretical explanations from two domains, those of the Simon effect and the spatial Stroop effect, are reviewed to clarify how and why stimulus location influences performance even when it is uninformative to the correct response.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of irrelevant location information on performance of visual choice-reaction tasks. We review empirical findings and theoretical explanations from two domains, those of the Simon effect and the spatial Stroop effect, in which stimulus location has been shown to affect reaction time when irrelevant to the task. We then integrate the findings and explanations from the two domains to clarify how and why stimulus location influences performance even when it is uninformative to the correct response. Factors that influence the processing of irrelevant location information include response modality, relative timing with respect to the relevant information, spatial coding, and allocation of attention. The most promising accounts are offered by models in which response selection is a function of (1) strength of association of the irrelevant stimulus information with the response and (2) temporal overlap of the resulting response activation with that produced by the relevant stimulus information.

849 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that management sells assets when doing so provides the cheapest funds to pursue its objectives rather than for operating efficiency reasons alone, and they find that the typical firm in their sample performs poorly before the sale and that the average stock-price reaction to asset sales is positive only when the proceeds are paid out.

474 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The extent of role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload reported by middle managers from 21 nations was related to national scores on power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, an....
Abstract: The extent of role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload reported by middle managers from 21 nations was related to national scores on power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, an...

462 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the construct of change schema is developed and its possible dimensions explained, using data from two samples and both quantitative and qualitative methods, they found that locus of control and orga...
Abstract: The construct of change schema is developed and its possible dimensions explained. Using data from two samples and both quantitative and qualitative methods, we found that locus of control and orga...

420 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the potential for bias in reliability estimation and for errors in item selection when alpha or unit-weighted omega are used are explored under a variety of simulated conditions, and the results suggest that composite reliability may be used as an assessment tool, but should not be used for item selection tool in structural equations modeling.
Abstract: Two composite reliability measures, coefficient alpha and coefficient omega with unit weights (otherwise known as construct reliability), are commonly used in structural equations modeling. However, a third measure, omega with unequal weights, is more theoretically appropriate. The potential for bias in reliability estimation and for errors in item selection when alpha or unit-weighted omega are used are explored under a variety of simulated conditions. The results suggest that composite reliability may be used as an assessment tool, but should not be used as an item selection tool in structural equations modeling.

353 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Radiation pneumonitis may become a complication after intraarterial 90Y-microspheres treatment when lung shunting, as assessed by Tc-MAA scan, is high (above 13%).
Abstract: Purpose : To investigate the clinical, histopathological, and radiological features of radiation pneumonitis arising as a complication of selective internal radiation treatment for liver tumors. To correlate the development of radiation pneumonitis with the degree of lung shunting as assessed by 99m Technetium-labeled macroaggregated albumin (Tc-MAA) scan. Methods and Materials : Five out of 80 patients who had inoperable hepatic tumors and underwent treatment with intraarterial 90 Yttrium- ( 90 Y)-microspheres, developed progressive restrictive ventilatory dysfunction without an infective or cardiovascular cause. Histopathological evidence of a pneumonitis and the presence of microspheres in the lung tissue suggested a diagnosis of radiation pneumonitis. The clinical course, radiological and histopathological findings, percentage tumor shunting to the lungs (lung shunting, as predicted by gamma camera scanning after intraarterial Tc-MAA), and the estimated radiation dose to the lungs were analyzed. In an attempt to reduce pulmonary shunting of the microspheres, three patients received partial hepatic embolization with inert particles before selective internal radiation therapy. Results : In the five patients who developed radiation pneumonitis, lung shunting percentages (as predicted by Tc-MAA scan) ranged from 13.1 to 45.6% (median 23.7%). The estimated whole lung radiation dose ranged from 10.43 Gy to 36.44 Gy (median 25.04 Gy). Among 75 patients who did not develop radiation pneumonitis, the percentage lung shunting ranged from less than 1% to 15% (median 6%). Nine patients had lung shunting greater than 13% and five of them developed radiation pneumonitis, whereas this developed in none of those in whom shunting was below 13%. The onset of radiation pneumonitis ranged from 1 to 6 months after internal radiation treatment. All five patients exhibited characteristic plain radiographic and computerized tomographic changes comprising extensive consolidation with well-defined lateral margins. Clinical improvement after corticosteroid treatment was seen in two patients. Three patients died from respiratory failure and two from other causes. Partial hepatic arterial embolization reduced the degree of lung shunting to less than 13%, but did not prevent the development of radiation pneumonitis. Conclusion : Radiation pneumonitis may become a complication after intraarterial 90 Y-microspheres treatment when lung shunting, as assessed by Tc-MAA scan, is high (above 13%). Prescribed activity of 90 Y and lung shunting of Tc-MAA should be considered together before giving selective internal radiation (SIR) therapy for hepatic tumors, and preferably avoided if the lung shunting is above 13%.

292 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Despite promising tumor response rates from Phase II trials, this prospective randomized trial has demonstrated no benefit from adjunctive chemotherapy to radiotherapy in the treatment of locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
Abstract: Purpose: A prospective randomized trial was conducted to compare chemoradiotherapy against radiotherapy alone in the treatment of locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Methods and Materials: Eighty-two patients with histologically proven nasopharyngeal carcinoma who had either Ho's N3 staging or any N stage with a nodal diameter of ≥ 4 cm were entered. Seventy-seven patients were evaluable for tumor response and survival. The patients were randomized to receive two cycles of cisplatin 100 mg/mg 2 Day 1, 5-fluorouracil 100 mg/m 2 24-h infusion Days 2, 3 and 4 before radical radiotherapy, and four cycles of postradiotherapy chemotherapy (37 patients) or radiotheraphy alone (40 patients). All patients received radical radiotherapy to the nasaopharynx and neck. The nasaopharynx and upper neck were treated to 66 Gy by conventional fractionation and the lower neck to 58 Gy. Booster radiotherapy (7.5 Gy/two fractions/week) was given to any residual nodes after standard radiotherapy. Results: The patients characteristics, including staging, were similar in both arms. The overall response rate to neoadjuvant chemotherapy was 81% (19% complete response, 62% partial response). The rates of radiotherapy for boosting parapharyngeal diseae or residual lymph nodes were not significantly different in the two arms. The overall complete response rate of chemoradiotherapy was 100%, and to radiotherapy alone, 95%. Toxicities in the chemoradiotherapy arm were mainly myelosuppression, nephrotoxicity, and nausea and vomiting. The degree of mucositis was not significantly different in the two arms. There was no treatment-related death. The median follow up was 28.5 months. The 2-year overall survival was 80% in the chemoradiotherapy arm and 80.5% in the radiotherapy arm. The 2-year disease-free survival was 68% in the chemoradiotherapy arm and 72% in the radiotherapy arm, without significantly difference between the two arms. The locoregional relapse rate, distant metastatic rate, and median time to relapse were also not significantly different between the two arms. Conclusions: Despite promising tumor response rates from Phase II trials, this prospective randomized trial has demonstrated no benefit from adjunctive chemotherapy to radiotherapy in the treatment of locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

268 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors' robust rules improve the performances of the existing PCA algorithms significantly when outliers are present and perform excellently for fulfilling various PCA-like tasks such as obtaining the first principal component vector, the first k principal component vectors, and directly finding the subspace spanned by the firstk vector principal components vectors without solving for each vector individually.
Abstract: This paper applies statistical physics to the problem of robust principal component analysis (PCA). The commonly used PCA learning rules are first related to energy functions. These functions are generalized by adding a binary decision field with a given prior distribution so that outliers in the data are dealt with explicitly in order to make PCA robust. Each of the generalized energy functions is then used to define a Gibbs distribution from which a marginal distribution is obtained by summing over the binary decision field. The marginal distribution defines an effective energy function, from which self-organizing rules have been developed for robust PCA. Under the presence of outliers, both the standard PCA methods and the existing self-organizing PCA rules studied in the literature of neural networks perform quite poorly. By contrast, the robust rules proposed here resist outliers well and perform excellently for fulfilling various PCA-like tasks such as obtaining the first principal component vector, the first k principal component vectors, and directly finding the subspace spanned by the first k vector principal component vectors without solving for each vector individually. Comparative experiments have been made, and the results show that the authors' robust rules improve the performances of the existing PCA algorithms significantly when outliers are present. >

244 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors generalizes the relative and absolute inequality measures pioneered by Atkinson, Kolm, and Sen to the multidimensional setting with K attributes of well being, and shows that different scale invariance axioms inexorably lead to different classifications of inequality indices.

242 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Tests in line detection with synthetic and real-world images demonstrate the high speed and low memory usage of the new extensions of the RHT, as compared both to the basic RHT and other versions of the Hough transform.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a strain of Lentinula (Lentinus) edodes, strain LS4, produces manganese-dependent peroxidase (MnP) and laccase, but not lignin peroxideidase, when grown on a defined medium with glucose as sole carbon source.
Abstract: Lentinula (Lentinus) edodes, strain LS4, produces manganese-dependent peroxidase (MnP) and laccase, but not lignin peroxidase, when grown on a defined medium with glucose as sole carbon source. MnP production is suppressed by nitrogen whereas highest levels of laccase were observed when the fungus was grown under high nitrogen (26 mM) conditions. Both the titre and time of appearance of MnP were affected by the concentration of Mn in the culture medium with highest enzyme levels recorded in cultures supplemented with 1.1 ppm Mn. Purified MnP from L. edodes LS4 has an apparent Mr of 59000 and a pI of 5.6, and differs in several respects from a MnP isolated from L. edodes grown on a commercial wood substrate.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A partition maximum likelihood approach is used to obtain the first stage estimates of the thresholds and the polyserial and polychoric correlations in the underlying correlation matrix, and a generalized least squares approach is employed to estimate the structural parameters in the correlation structure.
Abstract: This paper develops a computationally efficient procedure for analysis of structural equation models with continuous and polytomous variables. A partition maximum likelihood approach is used to obtain the first stage estimates of the thresholds and the polyserial and polychoric correlations in the underlying correlation matrix. Then, based on the joint asymptotic distribution of the first stage estimator and an appropriate weight matrix, a generalized least squares approach is employed to estimate the structural parameters in the correlation structure. Asymptotic properties of the estimators are derived. Some simulation studies are conducted to study the empirical behaviours and robustness of the procedure, and compare it with some existing methods.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The establishment of a continuous line of human ovarian epithelial cells may provide an in vitro model for study of carcinogenesis in human ovarian cancers.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper found that the U.S. stock market innovations were greater during the post-October 1987 period and that the Asian equity markets are less integrated with Japan's equity market than they are with the U., and they also found that Asian stock markets are more integrated with the Japanese stock market than the United States market.
Abstract: This paper documents the presence of a common stochastic trend between the U.S. and the Asian stock market movements during the post-October 1987 period. The evidence suggests that the “cointegrating structure” that ties these stock market together has substantially increased since October 1987. The influence of the U.S. stock market innovations was also found to be greater during the post-October period. The results also indicate that the Asian equity markets are less integrated with Japan's equity market than they are with the U.S. market.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Octreotide significantly reduces recurrent bleeding and the need for balloon tamponade in patients with variceal haemorrhage treated by endoscopic varicean ligation to prevent early rebleeding from varices.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A systematic treatment of the tail phenomenon for a broad class of models via a Green's function formalism and the Schwarzschild case with a power-law tail is exceptional among the class of the potentials having a logarithmic spatial dependence.
Abstract: It is well known that the dominant late time behavior of waves propagating on a Schwarzschild spacetime is a power-law tail; tails for other spacetimes have also been studied. This paper presents a systematic treatment of the tail phenomenon for a broad class of models via a Green's function formalism and establishes the following. (i) The tail is governed by a cut of the frequency Green's function G\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}(\ensuremath{\omega}) along the -Im\ensuremath{\omega} axis, generalizing the Schwarzschild result. (ii) The \ensuremath{\omega} dependence of the cut is determined by the asymptotic but not the local structure of space. In particular it is independent of the presence of a horizon, and has the same form for the case of a star as well. (iii) Depending on the spatial asymptotics, the late time decay is not necessarily a power law in time. The Schwarzschild case with a power-law tail is exceptional among the class of the potentials having a logarithmic spatial dependence. (iv) Both the amplitude and the time dependence of the tail for a broad class of models are obtained analytically. (v) The analytical results are in perfect agreement with numerical calculations.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The findings that avoidant coping strategies were consistently related to all three aspects of burnout suggested that teachers employing escape-avoidance to cope with stressors might be more prone to burnout.
Abstract: The tripartite components of burnout and eight coping strategies were assessed in a sample of 415 Chinese secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. While emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation were relatively undifferentiated among these teachers, a reduced sense of accomplishment as a distinct component of burnout was generally reported. The findings that avoidant coping strategies were consistently related to all three aspects of burnout suggested that teachers employing escape-avoidance to cope with stressors might be more prone to burnout. Implications for promoting certain patterns of coping to combat burnout were discussed.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, two dimensions of culture used in this research, individualism and Confucian dynamism, are treated as if they are independent when in fact they appear to be highly interrelated.
Abstract: Hofstede and his associates have presented statistical evidence purporting to identify a link between national culture and economic growth. This note describes two problems with this line of research. First, two of the dimensions of culture used in this research, individualism and Confucian dynamism, are treated as if they are independent when in fact they appear to be highly interrelated. And second, culture is not a sufficient condition to explain economic growth and is related to other important factors that play a role in determining economic growth. The consequences of these problems on interpretation of the research findings are discussed and recommendations for future research directions are proposed.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Data suggest that growth enhancement at 15 p.p.t. may be explained by a reduction of metabolic cost of osmoregulation, and a reorganisation of metabolism, which would allow protein sparing in favour of a shift towards preferential utilisation of carbohydrate and lipid.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a hedonic model is used to explore the effects of locational, structural, and neighborhood attributes on the price structure of private condominiums in Hong Kong, and the regression results and the elasticities of housing attributes obtained from the Box-Cox analysis indicate that the valuation of a property is sensitive to changes in housing traits.
Abstract: A hedonic model is used to explore the effects of locational, structural, and neighborhood attributes on the price structure of private condominiums in Hong Kong. The regression results and the elasticities of housing attributes obtained from the Box-Cox analysis indicate that the valuation of a property is sensitive to changes in housing traits. Home buyers are rational and are willing (unwilling) to pay for desirable (undesirable) housing attributes and that the valuation of a property is market-driven in Hong Kong.

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Nov 1995-Chest
TL;DR: In this article, video assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) was used to perform eight thymectomies for myasthenia gravis (MG) from June 1993 to December 1994.

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Aug 1995-BJUI
TL;DR: The normal infant's bladder was stable and emptied almost completely and voiding with incomplete co-ordination between detrusor contraction and urinary sphincter relaxation could be normal, contradicts the traditional concept of a totally uninhibited bladder in infancy.
Abstract: Objectives To evaluate normal bladder function and micturition patterns in infants. Patients, subjects and methods Twenty-one infants (16 boys, five girls; mean age 5.9 months) with no lower urinary tract pathology underwent natural filling cystometry. Micturition patterns were also observed simultaneously with polysomnography in 26 healthy neonates (16 boys, 10 girls; mean age 7.4 days). Results In infants, cystometry showed (95% CI) a capacity of 42–53 mL, a maximum rise in detrusor pressure during voiding of 95–120 cmH2O and a voiding efficiency (voided volume/capacity) of 0.86–0.91. On micturition, urinary flow was discoor-dinated from peak detrusor pressures in 10 infants. Detrusor instability occurred in one of 21 infants. Micturition was observed only during wakefulness or on arousal from sleep. In neonates, 17 of 61 recorded voids (28%) were during full wakefulness and 44 (72%) during arousal from sleep. Notably, none of the recorded voids occurred during quiet sleep. Conclusions The normal infant's bladder was stable and emptied almost completely. Voiding with incomplete co-ordination between detrusor contraction and urinary sphincter relaxation could be normal. Micturition never occurred during quiet sleep. There was cortical arousal in response to a full bladder even in new-born infants. This contradicts the traditional concept of a totally uninhibited bladder in infancy. There are potential implications for the management of children with nocturnal enuresis.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated whether e-mail is a better medium for conducting surveys than the other more traditional methods, in particular mail surveys which are generally agreed to have much in common with email surveys in such areas as the degree of personal contact between the interviewer and the interviewee, access of the interviewer to the questionnaire, and freedom of the interviewer regarding the timing and method of answering the questionnaire.
Abstract: Kazuaki (1990) pointed out that market research clients nowadays are more sensitive to cost and speed than they used to be. To satisfy these requirements, the global emergence of electronic media may be set to play a major role. It is therefore meaningful to investigate whether electronic mail (e-mail) is a better medium for conducting surveys than the other more traditional methods, in particular mail surveys which are generally agreed to have much in common with e-mail surveys in such areas as the degree of personal contact between the interviewer and the interviewee, access of the interviewee to the questionnaire, and freedom of the interviewee regarding the timing and method of answering the questionnaire.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This study shows that cross or lateral percutaneous pinning was found to be effective in the treatment of Gartland type III extension fractures with a high success rate and minimal complications.
Abstract: From 1985 to 1991, 623 cases of supracondylar fracture of the humerus in children were admitted to one center, of which 403 were analyzed in detail. Of these, 180 cases were classified as Gartland type III extension fractures, and 111 were treated via primary closed reduction and percutaneous smooth Kirschner wire pinning, of which 82 were followed up for an average of 3.5 years and were studied in detail clinically and radiologically. There were two cases of superficial pin tract infection and one of ulnar nerve palsy associated with the pinning. Nineteen fractures (10.5%) had an initial nerve palsy related to the injury. All recovered completely from 4 weeks to 40 weeks postinjury. Only one of nine cases (5%) with absent radial pulse required exploration. Eighty percent of all cases had excellent or good function according to the Flynn criteria of elbow assessment. The most important factor correlating with the final varus deformity was found to be the difference in Baumann's angle between the injured and the normal side after closed reduction and pin fixation. The results of cross pinning in eight cases were not found to be different from those of the lateral pinning group (74 cases). Ipsilateral fracture of the same limb occurred in 4.4% of the cases, the majority being a fracture of the distal radius. The average anesthetic time for the procedure was 54 min, and the average hospital stay was 2.9 days. Our study shows that cross or lateral percutaneous pinning was found to be effective in the treatment of Gartland type III extension fractures with a high success rate and minimal complications.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results suggest that promoter methylation is not the primary inactivation mechanism but is a stabilizing factor and differential methylation in the more upstream region, which is established in the gametes, is a likely candidate for the gametic signal and may directly control H19 activity.
Abstract: The mouse H19 gene is imprinted so that the paternal copy is both methylated and repressed during fetal development. However, the CpG-rich promoter region encompassing the transcription start is not methylated in sperm; this region must therefore become methylated postzygotically. We first examined the timing of DNA methylation of this region and the corresponding expression of H19. Both parental copies are initially undermethylated in blastocysts and the paternal copy then becomes fully methylated in the embryo around implantation; this methylation is more protracted in the extraembryonic lineages, especially in the trophoblast. By contrast to the lineage-dependent methylation, we observed exclusive expression of the maternal copy in preimplantation embryos and in all the lineages of early postimplantation embryos although variability may exist in cultured embryos. This indicates that methylation of the CpG-rich promoter is not a prerequisite for the paternal repression. We then examined whether methylation and expression occurs appropriately in the absence of a maternal or a paternal genome. Both H19 copies in androgenetic embryos are fully methylated while they are unmethylated in parthenogenetic embryos. This correlates with the lack of expression in androgenetic embryos but expression in parthenogenetic embryos. However, the androgenetic trophoblast was exceptional as it shows reduced methylation and expresses H19. These results suggest that promoter methylation is not the primary inactivation mechanism but is a stabilizing factor. Differential methylation in the more upstream region, which is established in the gametes, is a likely candidate for the gametic signal and may directly control H19 activity.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A positive effect of Ca on bone mass of the spine and radius but no effects on femoral-neck and height increase is confirmed and a longer trial is warranted to confirm a positive Ca effect during childhood that may modify future peak bone mass.
Abstract: There is limited information relating Ca intake to bone and height acquisition among Oriental children who consume little or even no milk. The present controlled study investigated the acquisition of bone mass and height of Chinese children with an initial Ca intake of approximately 567 mg/d who were supplemented to about 800 mg/d. Eighty-four 7-year-old Hong Kong Chinese children underwent an 18-month randomized, double-blind, controlled Ca-supplementation trial. The children were randomized to receive either 300 mg elemental Ca or a placebo tablet daily. Bone mass of the distal one-third radius was measured by single-photon absorptiometry, lumbar spine and femoral neck were determined using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Measurements were repeated 6-monthly. Baseline serum 25-hydroxycholecalciferol concentration and physical activity were also assessed. Baseline Ca intakes of the study group and controls were respectively 571 (SD 326) and 563 (SD 337) mg/d. There were no significant differences in baseline serum 25-hydroxycholecalciferol concentration (P = 0.71) and physical activity (P = 0.36) between the study and control groups. After 18 months the study group had significantly greater increases in lumbar-spinal bone mineral content (20.9 v. 16.34%; P = 0.035), lumbar-spinal area (11.16 v. 8.71%; P = 0.049), and a moderately greater increment in areal bone mineral density of the radius (7.74 v. 6.00%; P = 0.081) when compared with the controls. The results confirm a positive effect of Ca on bone mass of the spine and radius but no effects on femoral-neck and height increase. A longer trial is warranted to confirm a positive Ca effect during childhood that may modify future peak bone mass.

Journal Article
TL;DR: It is indicated that cough is a common side effect of treatment with ACE inhibitors in Hong Kong Chinese, although in most patients cessation of therapy is not required, and whether Chinese are particularly susceptible to ACE-inhibitor cough requires a formal prospective study comparing Chinese and non-Chinese patients.
Abstract: 1. Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are in common use for the treatment of hypertension and heart failure. Whereas they are, in general, well tolerated, a dry cough can develop which, on occasion, requires termination of therapy. The reported prevalence of cough with ACE inhibitor therapy has varied from 0.2 to 25%, depending upon methods of data collection, analysis and symptom reporting. 2. To evaluate the prevalence of cough in Chinese patients receiving ACE inhibitors, interviews were carried out in 191 patients in Hong Kong who were taking therapy which included captopril or enalapril for hypertension or heart failure, and 382 patients matched for sex and age receiving alternative medications which excluded an ACE inhibitor (controls). Patients and controls were interviewed in a blinded manner by the same interviewer using a common adverse-effect questionnaire. 3. Persistent cough was reported in 44% of patients taking an ACE inhibitor (46% of those receiving captopril and 41.8% of patients taking enalapril), and in 11.1% of the controls (P < 0.001). The prevalence of other adverse reactions was similar, with no significant difference between the two treatment groups. The complication of cough was not related significantly to age, sex, underlying disease, drug dosage or smoking status. 4. This study indicates that cough is a common side effect of treatment with ACE inhibitors in Hong Kong Chinese, although in most patients cessation of therapy is not required. Whether Chinese are particularly susceptible to ACE-inhibitor cough requires a formal prospective study comparing Chinese and non-Chinese patients.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Histology revealed that the peripheral echogenic foci seen within the nodes on US correlated with psammoma bodies which are characteristic for papillary carcinomas, highlighting the importance of recognizing peripheral punctate calcification in the cervical nodes as a useful sign for the diagnosis of metastatic papillary cancer of the thyroid.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Using the combination of propofol and ketamine for anesthesia induction and total intravenous anesthesia, doses were additive at hypnotic and anesthetic endpoints, and the cardiostimulant effects of ketamine balanced the cardiodepressants effects of prop ofol.
Abstract: BackgroundPropofol and ketamine may be paired for anesthesia induction and for total intravenous anesthesia. The nature of any sedative interactions occurring between propofol and ketamine are unknown. The combination when used for anesthesia induction in female patients was studied.MethodsQuantal d