This case emphasizes the interest of considering 12-lead electrocardiogram

during management of patients with CRT. (PACE 2009; 32: 1479-1480)”
“Purpose To assess the measurement properties (acceptability, validity, reliability and responsiveness), of the MOS 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), the EQ-5D, the Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) and the Musculoskeletal Functional Assessment Instrument (MFA), in patients who have undergone limb reconstruction surgery (LRS).

Methods Four instruments measuring patient-reported outcome were completed at baseline and 12 months from surgery.

Results 101 LRS patients were recruited with 95 responding at baseline and 71 BMN 673 nmr at a 12-month follow-up. Response PS341 rates at baseline were over 94%. In three instruments, there was evidence of floor or ceiling effect, the exception being the EQ-5D. Cronbach’s alpha statistics of internal consistency reliability were acceptable at >= 0.80 for all dimensions of the MFA, the SF-MPQ PRI(S) and seven of the SF-36 dimensions. When comparing mean changes in scores between baseline and 12 months, the most responsive measure was the

SF-36 with an average Standardised Response Mean of 0.48 for those who reported their health as better. Statistically significant differences were observed between the health change groups (‘worse’, ‘better’ and ‘same’) for four dimensions of the SF-36, the two summary scores and the SF-6D.

Conclusions Variation and poor performance of some of the instruments resulted in a recommendation of using the SF-36 and the SF-6D for LRS patients.”
“Micro-Raman spectroscopy is employed to study the phonon confinement in Au- and Mn-catalyzed GaAs and InAs nanowires. The phonon confinement model is used

to fit the LO phonon peaks, which also takes into account the contribution to the asymmetry of the line shape due to the presence of surface optical (SO) phonons and structural defects. This also allows us to determine the correlation lengths check details in these wires, that is the average distance between defects and the defect density in these nanowires. Influence of these defects on the SO phonon is also investigated. A good agreement between the experimental results and the calculations for the SO phonon mode by using the dielectric continuum model is also obtained.”
“Acute lead perforation is one of the major complications associated with implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) implantation. We describe a case with repetitive inappropriate ICD discharges due to noise oversensing as the first sign of lead perforation. (PACE 2009; 32: 1481-1484)”
“Objective If the assumption of measurement invariance is not tested, we cannot be sure whether differences observed are due to true differences in health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL), or are measurement artifacts.