Background: Speckle tracking echocardiography (STE)-derived mitral annular displacement (MAD) utilizes the speckle tracking technique to measure strain vectors, which provides accurate estimates of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF).Objectives: To validate the accuracy of mitral annular displacement (MAD), assessed by Speckle Tracking Echocardiography (STE), as a surrogate for determination of left ventricular systolic function in comparison to 2-Dimensions Simpson method in patients with different heart diseases.Methods : This cross-sectional study included patients who referred to outpatient department of Ibn Albitar Center for Cardiac Surgery, Baghdad, Iraq, between October 2012 and April 2013. STE continuously tracked annular motion throughout the cardiac cycle in the apical 4- and 2-chamber views. LVEF for each patient was measured by both Simpson method and STE-derived MAD.Results: This study included 100 patients, of them (35%) had ischemic heart disease (IHD), (10%) had dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), (10%) had valvular heart disease (VHD), (25%) had normal echocardiography, and (20%) had hypertensive heart disease (HHD).There was significant correlation between EF % (derived by MAD) and EF % (derived by Simpson method) in patients with different heart diseases. This correlation was good in normal subjects (r=0.673), and those with IHD(r=0.896), DCM (r=0.724) and VHD (r=0.935), while in HHD it was moderately correlated (r=0.455). There was slight under-estimation of LVEF derived by MAD (a mean value of difference 0.846 %; p =0.022). In subgroup analysis, this difference was seen only in patients with HHD (a mean value of difference 3.145 %; p <0.001), while it was absent in other subgroups.Conclusion: STE-derived MAD provides easy, fast, and accurate assessments of global longitudinal systolic function. LVEF derived by MAD was correlated well with LVEF derived by Simpson method in patients with different heart diseases
Steady natural and mixed convection flow in a square vented enclosure filled with water-saturated aluminum metal foam is numerically investigated. The left vertical wall is kept at constant temperature and the remaining walls are thermally insulated. Forced convection is imposed by providing an inlet at cavity bottom surface, and a vent at the top surface. Natural convection takes place due to the temperature difference inside the enclosure. Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer model for fluid flow and the two-equation of the local thermal non-equilibrium model for heat flow was adopted to describe the flow characteristics within the porous cavity. Numerical results are obtained for a wide range of width of the inlet as a fraction
... Show MoreAbstract Aim: Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder which affects communication and social interaction of children. It is a heterogeneous disease with various clinical presentations. Some genes are involved in its pathogenesis. It has been suggested that environmental exposure to lead can increase the risk of autism. The aim of our study was to compare blood lead levels among autistic and non-autistic children. Material and Method: This retrospective study included 107 children (60 with autism and 47 without autism) referred from the different Iraqi provinces, in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017, to the poisoning consultation center in Baghdad. Data collection including age, gender, residence, referral source, family history and blood lead l
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A numerical investigation of mixed convection in a horizontal annulus filled with auniform fluid-saturated porous medium in the presence of internal heat generation is carried out.The inner cylinder is heated while the outer cylinder is cooled. The forced flow is induced by thecold outer cylinder rotating at a constant angular velocity. The flow field is modeled using ageneralized form of the momentum equation that accounts for the presence of porous mediumviscous, Darcian and inertial effects. Discretization of the governing equations is achieved usinga finite difference method. Comparisons with previous works are performed and the results showgood agreement. The effects of pertinent parameters such as the Richardson number and internalRay
... Show MoreIntegration of laminar bubbling flow with heat transfer equations in a novel internal jacket airlift bioreactor using microbubbles technology was examined in the present study. The investigation was accomplished via Multiphysics modelling to calculate the gas holdup, velocity of liquid recirculation, mixing time and volume dead zone for hydrodynamic aspect. The temperature and internal energy were determined for heat transfer aspect.
The results showed that the concentration of microbubbles in the unsparged area is greater than the chance of large bubbles with no dead zones being observed in the proposed design. In addition the pressure, due to the recirculation velocity of liquid around the draft
... Show MoreA random laser is a non-conventional laser whose feedback mechanism is based on dissorder-induced light. However, random lasers occur in gain media with numerous scatterers and produce coherent laser emission without any predesigned cavity. The generation of coherent emission from multiple scattering is quite general and its basic principles are shown here using sulforhodamine B-TiO suspensions system. These suspensions were pumped with 337.1 nm pulses from N2 laser and the spectral and temporal behavior of light emitted from the pumped surface was recorded. When we pump power above a certain threshold a dramatic narrowing of the emission line width and a shortening of the emitted pulses were observed. We have experimentally found that i
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