A comparative study of TR Band and a new hemostatic compression device after transradial coronary catheterization

Objective: Transradial coronary catheterization has proved to be safe and effective in clinical practice. Various hemostatic compressive devices have been used in subsequent procedures. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of a new hemostatic compression device and the widely used TR Band. Methods: A total of 118 patients were divided randomly into two groups: TR Band and the new hemostatic compression device. Efficacy of hemostasis, patient comfort, local vascular dysfunction, and radial artery occlusion(RAO) were evaluated and compared between groups. Results: Occurrence of errhysis or hematoma did not significantly differ between groups(13.6% vs. 11.9%, P = 0.782). Fewer patients had moderate to severe pain or moderate to severe numbness in the new hemostatic compression device group(1.7% vs. 22.0%; 1.7% vs. 18.6%, respectively). Pulse loss between distal artery and device was lower in the new hemostatic compression device group(5.1% vs. 22.0%, P = 0.007), and fewer patients experienced obstruction of venous reflux compared with the TR Band group(6.8% vs. 25.4%, P = 0.006). Combined incidence of RAO at discharge was 7.6%, and was lower in the new hemostatic compression device group(1.7% vs. 13.6%, P = 0.015). In contrast to the TR Band, application of the new hemostatic compression device was independently associated with lower incidence of RAO at discharge(odds ratio: 0.062, 95% confidence interval: 0.006–0.675, P = 0.022). Conclusions: Both the new hemostatic compression device and the TR Band can efficiently achieve hemostasis following transradial coronary catheterization. However, fewer patients felt discomfort with application of the new hemostatic compression device. Pulse loss in the artery distal to the compression device, obstruction of venous reflux, and RAO occurred significantly less often with application of the new device.

Teachers cooperation:team-knowledge distillation for multiple cross-domain few-shot learning

Although few-shot learning(FSL)has achieved great progress,it is still an enormous challenge especially when the source and target set are from different domains,which is also known as cross-domain few-shot learning(CD-FSL).Utilizing more source domain data is an effective way to improve the performance of CD-FSL.However,knowledge from different source domains may entangle and confuse with each other,which hurts the performance on the target domain.Therefore,we propose team-knowledge distllation networks(TKD-Net)to tackle this problem,which explores a strategy to help the cooperation of multiple teachers.Specifically,we distill knowledge from the cooperation of teacher networks to a single student network in a meta-learning framework.It incorporates task-oriented knowledge distillation and multiple cooperation among teachers to train an efficient student with better generalization ability on unseen tasks.Moreover,our TKD-Net employs both response-based knowledge and relation-based knowledge to transfer more comprehensive and effective knowledge.Extensive experimental results on four fine-grained datasets have demonstrated the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed TKD-Net approach.

p-Cresyl sulfate promotes the formation of atherosclerotic lesions and induces plaque instability by targeting vascular smooth muscle cells

Coronary atherosclerosis is a major complication of chronic kidney disease. This condition contributes to the increased mortality in dialysis patients.p-Cresyl sulfate （PCS） is a prototype of protein-bound uremic toxins that cannot be efficiently removed through routine dialysis procedures. In the present study, ApoE/- mice that underwent 5/6 nephrectomy were randomly divided into two groups, namely, vehicle-treated group （n = 20） and PCS-treated group （n = 20）. Mice were sacrificed for en face and immunohistological analyses after 8 or 24 weeks of high-fat diet. Rat aortic vascular smooth muscle cells （VSMCs） were treated with phosphate buffer solution or 500 ltmol/L PCS for in vitro evaluation. PCS-treated mice were observed to suffer increased atherosclerotic lesions after eight weeks of PCS administration. Moreover, 24 weeks of PCS administration also markedly increased the vulnerability index of aortic plaques. PCS was also observed to facilitate the migration and proliferation of VSMCs during the progression of the disease. Moreover, PCS disturbed the balance between matrix metalloproteinases and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases within the plaques. Thus, PCS played a vital role in promoting atherogenesis and disturbing the stability of formed plaques probably by targeting VSMCs.