Clinical application of Chinese Nanjing persistent vegetative state scale.

BACKGROUND: It is a challenge to characterize the consciousness level of patients with severe disturbance of consciousness and predict their prognosis effectively for Chinese doctors. We aimed to investigate the psychometric property and the diagnostic practicality of severe disturbance of consciousness by Chinese Nanjing persistent vegetative state scale (CNPVSS) which was first set up in 1996 and modified in 2001 and 2011. METHODS: The concurrent validity, inter-rater consistency and diagnostic accuracy of CNPVSS and Chinese version of coma recovery scale-revised (CRS-R) were investigated by assessment of 380 patients with severe disorders of consciousness. RESULTS: Total scores of the CNPVSS were correlated significantly with that of the CRS-R, indicating acceptable concurrent validity. Sub-scale analysis showed moderate to high inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability. CNPVSS was superior to CRS-R on the diagnosis sensitivity. The CNPVSS was able to distinguish 65 patients in emergence from minimal consciousness state who were misclassified as in minimal consciousness state (MCS) by the CRS-R, and it could also distinguish two patients in MCS who were misclassified as in vegetative state by the CRS-R. CONCLUSION: The CNPVSS is an appropriate measurement and is sensitive to distinguish the MCS patients from the VS patients.

A novel clutter rejection scheme in color flow imaging.

In ultrasound color flow imaging systems, it is important to suppress the clutter signals originated from stationary and slowly moving tissue sufficiently. Without sufficient clutter rejection, the estimation of the blood flow velocity will be inaccurate, and the imaging quality will be poor. In this paper we present a new clutter rejection scheme involving first down-mixing the clutter signals to zero frequency and then cancelling the stationary echo by subtracting the signals from two consecutive pulses. This stationary echo cancelling scheme is easy to be realized with small computational power, and is adaptive to the clutter signals. Theoretical analysis and simulation using RF data prove that it's an efficient and practical clutter rejection scheme for color flow imaging.

[The research on monoamine neurotransmitters changes in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid in patients with persistent vegetative state].

AIM: To study the relationships between the pathogenesis of persistent vegetative state (PVS) and the levels of monoamine neurotransmitters in plasmas and cerebrospinal fluids (CSFs) in patients with PVS. METHODS: The high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to detect. RESULTS: It was found that the level of dopamine (1.95 +/- 0.99) was significantly increased in plasma compared with the control (1.16 +/- 0.47) (P < 0.05), but the levels of 5-HT, TYR, TRP, GABA of plasma were insignificantly changed. In cerebrospinal fluid, the level of DA was insignificantly changed, and the level of 5-HT (0.49 +/- 0.32) was significantly decreased compared with the control (1.02 +/- 0.35) (P < 0.05), but the levels of TYR (1.36 +/- 0.11), TRP (0.63 +/- 0.40), GABA (1.15 +/- 0.61) were significantly increased respectively compared with the controls (0.40 +/- 0.24; 0.29 +/- 0.22; 0.37 +/- 0.45) (P < 0.05; P < 0.05; P < 0.01). The levels of GABA and DA in plasma were significant correlated (P < 0.05), and GABA and DA in CSF were also significant correlated (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggested that PVS is related to the decrease of 5-HT in CSF and the increase of DA in plasma.