Bone metastases cause pain, suffering and impaired quality of life (QoL). Palliative radiotherapy (RT) and/or chemotherapy are effective methods in controlling pain, reducing analgesics use and improving QoL. This study goal was to investigate the changes in QoL scores among patients who responded to palliative treatment.A prospective study evaluating the role of radiation therapy in a public academic hospital in São Paulo-Brazil recorded patients' opioid use, pain score, Portuguese version of QLQ-BM22 and QLQ-C30 before and 2 months after radiotherapy. Analgesic use and pain score were used to calculate international pain response category. Overall response was defined as the sum of complete response (CR) and partial response (PR). CR was defined as pain score of 0 with no increase in analgesic intake whereas PR was defined as pain reduction ≥2 without analgesic increase or analgesic reduction in ≥25% without increase in pain at the treated site.From September 2014 to October 2015, 25 patients with bone metastases responded to RT or chemotherapy (1 CR, 24 PR). There were 8 male and 17 female patients. The median age of the 25 patients was 59 (range, 22 to 80) years old. Patient's primary cancer site was breast [11], prostate [5], lung [2], others [7]. For QLQ-BM 22, the mean scores of 4 categories at baseline were: pain site (PS) 39, pain characteristics (PC) 61, function interference (FI) 49 and psycho-social aspects (PA) 57. At 2 month follow up, the scores were PS 27, PC 37, FI 70 and PA 59. Statistical significant improvement (P<0.05) was seen in PS, PC, FI but not PA. In the QLQ-C30, the scores were not statistically different for all categories, except for pain that demonstrated a 33 point decrease in the median pain score domain (66 to 33).Responders to RT at 2 months presented improvement in BM22 and C30 pain domains, and also improvement in functional interference domain of the BM22 questionnaire.
In the development and production stages of components, the reliability enhancement test (RET) has been used as one of the necessary test methods to identify weak links in product design and production. Due to the diversity and the complex environment of components, how to reduce the cost of RET and stimulate the potential defects of the device products quickly has become the primary research goal. In this paper, a design method of component multi-stress RET based on fuzzy theory is presented. First, we use the FMECA to obtain the sensitive stresses of components. The sensitive stresses order is measured by the fuzzy theory. Second, we use the double-crossed stepwise stress method to verify the sensitive stresses sequence. Third, the stress combination of RET is determined by using the fuzzy matrix calculation results and the data distribution characteristics. Fourth, using the failure physics theory and orthogonal experiment methods to optimize the design of RET. Finally, a case study with A/D converter is carried out to verify the above methods. The optimization method of multi-stress RET is helpful to quantify different factors and quickly excite potential defects of components by using failure physical simulations.
This paper proposed a storage life prediction method for air sealed electromagnetic relay based on Physics of Failure (PoF) analysis by an Accelerated Storage Degradation Test (ASDT) of the electromagnetic relay to forecast the component failure. Firstly, an Accelerated Storage Degradation Test (ASDT) of air sealed electromagnetic relay is designed and implemented based on the storage failure mechanism. Secondly, the PoF analysis such as Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) energy spectrum analysis is designed for the contact of relay after ASDT. The organic compound content on contact is analyzed at each temperature testing samples. Then the time series method is applied to model the degradation path and the storage life is predicted according to the characteristic of ASDT data. Finally, based on the relationship between prediction of the storage life and organic contamination degree of the contact, the PoF model of contact contamination of electromagnetic relay is proposed, which presents the relationship between the storage residual life and the carbon content of the organic compound on the contact. It is meaningful to avoiding the redundant preventive maintenance and saving the maintenance costs.
In this paper, the storage failure mode and mechanism of optoelectronic couplers are studied by Accelerated Degradation Testing (ADT) and a series of following analyses. Firstly, the type of optoelectronic coupler to be studied is determined in the paper. Then, an ADT is conducted, which ends after 4176 hours. Then it is found that all the parameters show no degradation except for Current Transfer Ratio (CTR) and the degradation rates of CTR between stress levels follow the Arrhenius law. However, different from the previous research, a phenomenon of phased degradation is discovered in the highest stress level. To determine the degradation causes of the two phases, a series of follow-up analyses is conducted. By excluding the possibility of integrated photosensitive circuit degradation and Light Emitting Diode (LED) contamination, we identify the active layer of LED as the degradation region and ascribe the CTR degradation to an improvement of deep-level defects. To describe the phased degradation, we also establish a phased model. In the first phase, the latent defect sources transform into deep-level defects. In the latter phase, deep-level defects form non-radiative carrier-recombination centers, and the non-radiative carrier-recombination centers increase the amount of deep-level defects in return. For a further verification, a simulation with Atlas is also conducted by injecting different amount of deep-level defects into the active layer of LED and observing the degradation of LED luminance. With the fixed transmission ratio between the luminance and the output current, the degradation trend of CTR is acquired. A good fit between ADT and simulation results is shown, which could verify the correctness of the storage degradation model. The established model can be utilized to assess and improve the storage reliability of AlGaAs/GaAs LED based optoelectronic couplers.
Pelvic radiation may cause radiation enteritis, which commonly manifests as diarrhea. Radiation to the abdomen or pelvis may also cause radiation-induced nausea and vomiting (RINV) which is often treated with anti-emetics such as serotonin (5-HT3) receptor antagonists (RA). However, a common side effect of these anti-emetic medications is constipation. Both diarrhea and constipation can have a significant impact on patient quality of life (QOL). The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of diarrhea and constipation in patients receiving pelvic radiation and anti-emetics.Patients undergoing pelvic radiation between January 2011 and March 2017 at Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Centre were enrolled in three prospective clinical trials studying the efficacy of various anti-emetics for RINV prophylaxis. Patients completed QOL questionnaires which included a single question about severity of constipation at baseline, day 5 and 10 during radiation if applicable, and day 5 and 10 after completion of radiation; severity was measured on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1= "not at all" to 4= "very much". Patients also recorded severity of diarrhea throughout baseline, treatment, and 10 days follow-up via daily diaries; responses were qualitative ranging from "no diarrhea" to "severe diarrhea" on a 4-point scale.Fifty-nine patients received pelvic radiation across the three trials. The average constipation score at baseline was 1.69 [standard deviation (SD) 0.93], and increased up to 2.33 (SD 1.03) at day 10 during treatment. Following treatment, the average score decreased to 1.61 (SD 0.80) at day 10 follow-up with the majority of patients reporting no constipation at this time (57.7%). The average diarrhea score at baseline was 1.03 (SD 0.18) and remained stable throughout treatment and follow-up. A vast majority of patients reported no diarrhea after day 10 follow-up (96.4%).Constipation was more prevalent than diarrhea during radiation treatment and up to day 10 after radiation to the pelvis. Approximately 42% of patients will have constipation on day 10 post radiation. Further research is needed to assess the causes of constipation including analgesics, and the effect on QOL during and shortly after palliative radiation to the pelvis.
Rolling bearing is a very essential component of the industrial machinery. The bearing fault could cause a significant loss. Therefore, it is necessary to perform fault diagnosis and prediction on the bearing. This paper combines Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD), Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) difference spectrum de-noising, and the convolutional neural network (CNN) to realize the diagnosis and prediction of bearing faults. EEMD is used to extract features, and SVD difference spectrum de-noising is used to denoise the decomposed signals. The reconstructed vibration signals are then fed into CNN to realize fault diagnosis. Further, by analyzing the output of the softmax layer after the input of testing sets, the prediction of bearing fault can be realized. The bearing vibration signals are used to perform diagnosis. And we use partial samples of bearing fault full-period data to retrain CNN for prediction. In this paper, these methods successfully lead to bearing fault diagnosis with high accuracy and early bearing fault prediction.
Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) is widely used in high reliability field, and is susceptible to single event latch-up (SEL) effect. Based on Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) simulation software, a typical CMOS structure is selected to simulate SEL effect and study the simulation results under different conditions. The relation between the simulation condition and the simulation result is concluded. The instructions for SEL-reinforcement design and applications of the CMOS components are obtained to improve the design reliability.
Bone metastases clinic (BMC) is a multidisciplinary clinic where patients with bony metastases are assessed in conjunction by orthopedic surgery, radiation oncology, interventional radiology, and palliative medicine teams. The objective of the study was to determine the number of older adult (OA) referrals made to BMC and to examine their case dispositions.Patients who were referred to the BMC from 2007 to 2015 were included in the study. Demographic information including gender, age, Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS), primary cancer site and reason for referral, as well as case dispositions were recorded for each patient. The proportion of OA attendance was calculated for each year from the total number of patient visits. OA attendance was defined as individuals ≥65 years of age who attended the BMC, and non-OA patients were those <65 years of age. Descriptive statistics were employed.A total of 551 patients were included with a median age of 64 years. The median KPS was 70 for OA and 80 for non-OA patients. OA attendance ranged per year from 42.5% to 58.7%. 14.1% of non-OA and 10.9% of OA patients were offered surgery. 62 patients in both cohorts (22.6% of OA and 22.4% of non-OA patients) were offered palliative radiation.From 2007 to 2015, OA patients comprised a significant proportion of referrals to the BMC. Younger patients were offered surgery slightly more often when compared to OA patients. Age did not appear to be a precluding factor for BMC referral or a deterrent in treatments offered.
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