Safety and efficacy of transradial coronary angiography and intervention in patients older than 80 years： from the Korean Transradial Intervention Prospective Registry

Background Radial artery access for coronary procedures is a safe and beneficial technique. However, elderly patients have been considered as a higher risk group of access site related complications compared to younger patients. This study was conducted to investigate the feasibility and safety oftransradial coronary angiography or intervention in the elderly. Methods A total of 6132 patients from Korean Transradial Intervention Prospective Registry at 20 centers were analyzed. Patients were divided into the non-elderly group （n = 5667） and the elderly （_〉 80 years） group （n = 465）. Using propensity score matching, the elderly group （n = 465） was compared with one-to-one matched the non-elderly group （n = 465）. Results After propensity score matching, mean age was 64.3 ＋ 10.3 years in the non-elderly group and 83.5 -4- 3.3 years in the elderly group. There was no difference of procedural characteristics, procedural and fluoroscopic times. Access site cross-over rate was not different between the non-elderly group and elderly group （7.5% vs. 6.2%, P = 0.074）. Bleeding compli- cations occurred similarly in two groups （2.6% of the non-elderly group vs. 1.9% of the elderly group, P -~ 0.660）. Access site complications were 1.9% of the non-elderly group and 0.9% of the elderly group （P = 0.263）. Both of in hospital death and cardiovascular death for one year were also similar between two groups. Conclusions Transradial angiography or intervention was safe and feasible in elderly patients. Complication rates and clinical outcomes in elderly patients were comparable with those in non-elderly patients.

Percutaneous closure of congenital Gerbode defect using Nit-Occlud^®LêVSD coil

We present a case report about percutaneous closure of a congenital Gerbode defect using Nit-Occlud~? Lê VSD coil. The patient was referred to our hospital with a diagnosis of ventricular septal defect(VSD) and severe pulmonary arterial hypertension. But transthoracic echocardiography revealed a communication between the left ventricle(LV) and the right atrial(RA), called Gerbode defect. Catheterization confirmed the shunt from the LV to the RA. We successfully closed the defect with a VSD coil. After uneventful 6 mo follow-up, the patient was out of dyspnea, the symptom urged him to have medical attention. This case report is to discuss the diagnosis and percutaneous treatment approach for this rare congenital heart disease.

Accurate Approximation of the Earth Mover's Distance in Linear Time

Color descriptors are one of the important features used in content-based in, age retrieval. The dominant color descriptor （DCD） represents a few perceptually dominant colors in an image through color quantization. For image retrieval based on DCD, the earth mover＇s distance （EMD） and the optimal color composition distance were proposed to measure the dissimilarity between two images. Although providing good retrieval results, both methods are too time-consuming to be used in a large image database. To solve the problem, we propose a new distance function that calculates an approximate earth mover＇s distance in linear time. To calculate the dissimilarity in linear time, the proposed approach employs the space-filling curve for multidimensional color space. To improve the accuracy, the proposed approach uses multiple curves and adjusts the color positions. As a result, our approach achieves order-of-magnitude time improvement but incurs small errors. We have performed extensive experiments to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach. The results reveal that our approach achieves almost the same results with the EMD in linear time.

Preface

It is our great pleasure to edit this special section of the Journal of Computer Science and Technology （JCST）. The database field has experienced a rapid growth with increasing of data. Therefore, novel technology for covering emerging databases such as network or graph analysis, spatial or temporal data analysis, search, recommendation, and data mining is required. The goal of the section is to provide state-of-the-art research issues, challenges, new technologies, and solutions of emerging databases. This section publishes seven interesting articles related to query processing, trajectory data reduction, botnet evolution, recommendation system, bielustering, and protein structure alignment. The articles are summarized as follows.