All clinical trials

The study examines time spent in the emergency room on admission of patients with hip fracture in a cohort with a traditional setup compared with a prospective cohort with a fast track admission schedule including nurse initiation of treatmnet, standardized analgesia, fluid and oxygen therapy and standardized logistics for x-ray and admission procedures.

We suggest to investigate serotonin uptake in schizophrenia patients receiving ECT

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of genetic and environmental factors in the cause of Parkinson's disease.

The purpose of this study is to identify differences in TB specific immune responses among immunosuppressed patients latently infected with TB and patients with active TB.

The proposed work is based on the detection of a novel molecule for sensitivity to oxidative stress in humans in venous blood

Ultrasonographic examination has long been used to assess the swallowing function. It has the advantages of no ionizing radiation on examination and the possibility of using the real food instead of the barium meal in testing. Thus, the subjects can be examined repeatedly and in a more physiological status of swallowing. However, the ultrasonographic examination is only used in assessing the oral phase of swallowing. It can accurately visualize the tongue movement, measure the oral transit time of bolus, and sometimes the hypoid bone motion, but has not been applied on the evaluation of pharyngeal phase of swallowing. Physically, laryngeal elevation is an essential component of the swallowing movement on pharyngeal phase. It ensures the occlusion of airway and opening of criopharymgeus muscle, and thus prevents the aspiration. To evaluate the laryngeal elevation is crucial point in managing the dysphagic patients. The purpose of this project is to measure the laryngeal elevation in normal and in dysphagic patients with cerebrovascular (CVA) accident using ultrasonographic techniques. This work will include four group subjects. The first group consists of 20 young subjects (< 40 years); the second group consists of 20 age-matched normal subjects; the third group consists of 20 CVA patients without swallowing problems, and the fourth group consists of 20 CVA patients with dysphagia, which was proven by VFSS. The laryngeal elevation is detected by ultrasound with the transducer placing between the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage. The two markers are easily detected on sonogram because of the presence of acoustic shadow, a specific character of bony structure on sonogram. The distance between the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage before and during swallowing is measures and compared among the groups. The distance change of the patients with dysphagia is further compared with that defined by VFSS. With the result of this study, we will understand the status of laryngeal elevation during swallowing in normal and dysphagic subjects, and further determine the accuracy of ultrasonographic measurement in measuring the laryngeal elevation. With this knowledge, we might extend the usage of ultrasonographic examination on evaluating swallowing function.

Adenocarcinoma of the endometrium is the fourth most frequent cancer in women. Surgery is the treatment of choice in patients with noninvasive or locally advanced disease. The surgical technique consists of an exploratory laparotomy, with total hysterectomy, bilateral oophorectomy, peritoneal washing, and, in selected high-risk patients, omental and peritoneal biopsies and lymphadenectomy. Therefore, preoperative clinical and instrumental staging of the local spread of disease, as well as local and distant lymph node involvement, represent a critical step in tailoring the extent and the radicalness of surgery. The role of angiogenesis in cancer growth and metastasis has been gaining much attention for decades. Recent clinical evidence supports this notion. The gradual increase in angiogenesis intensity with tumor progression in malignant melanoma has been reported. Abulafia et al. reported that increasing angiogenicity could be noted from simple hyperplasia, complex hyperplasia, atypical hyperplasia, and Stage IA endometrial carcinoma to invasive endometrial carcinoma. The investigators' research team has shown that incremental angiogenesis could be demonstrated in the tumorigenesis and the possibility of lymph node metastasis in endometrial malignancy. Besides, other growth factors such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), transforming growth factor- (TGF-), IL-6 and IL-8 have also been reported to correlate with the angiogenesis and the metastasis of endometrial cancer. It seems that tumor angiogenesis of endometrial cancer could be utilized as an important parameter to assess the disease severity of the endometrial cancer. So, the investigators would like to propose this proposal to focus on the tumor angiogenesis in endometrial cancer patients. There are several purposes in this study. First, the investigators will evaluate and compare tumor angiogenesis surveyed from functional MRI and power Doppler sonography in endometrial cancer patients who receive surgery. Second, the investigators will evaluate whether tumor angiogenesis could be a marker to predict the disease severity of endometrial cancer. Third, the role of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in endometrial cancer will be elucidated.

The purpose of this study was to compare the balance strategy, as well as center of pressure (COP) trajectory and parameters between healthy adults and patients with hemiplegia in response to slow- and fast-speed waist- pulling perturbations in forward, left, right, and backward directions.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been the leading cause of cancer death in Taiwan. About 6000-8000 people died of this cancer every year in Taiwan. Though regular sonographic examination can early detect small HCC and there are many therapeutic modalities for HCC, the therapeutic results remains unsatisfactory. Though Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and des-γ-carboxy prothrombin (DCP) are used as the tumor markers for diagnosis of HCCs, these two markers are not good enough for the early detection of small HCCs. To improve the survival, further investigations of the early diagnostic markers are still needed. In this current project, we applied the proteomic method to identify the HCC biomarkers.

This is a study of the lung health of the population of Vancouver and the extent of, and the risk factors for, chronic obstructive lung disease.