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BACKGROUND: Patients with malignant pleural effusion (MPE) are usually treated with an indwelling pleural catheter (IPC) or pleurodesis. However, most do not achieve a satisfactory control rate of pleural effusion and have poor prognosis. Distilled water has cytocidal effects of hypotonic shock and can result in the lysis of cancer cells which was used in surgery to eradicate cancer cells. However, there is no study focusing on the efficacy of intrapleural hyperthemic perfusion for MPE under video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS). This study explored the efficacy and safety of intrapleural hyperthermic perfusion (IHP) with distilled water in patients with MPE. METHODS: In this retrospective, single-arm trial, patients admitted to department of cardiothoracic surgery of Taizhou hospital and diagnosed with MPE caused by non-small cell lung cancer from January 2014 and December 2018 were included. The clinical characteristics including age, gender smoking history, Karnofsky score, volume of pleural effusion, TNM cancer stage, pathology, genetic test of patients were collected. Patients were treated with hyperthermic perfusion. The pleural cavity was perfused with 43.0 ℃ distilled water for 60 minutes under video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS). The efficacy of treatment was defined as follows: (I) complete remission (CR; no recurrence of pleural effusion after IHP for at least four weeks); (II) partial remission (PR; pleural effusion was decreased by 50% and the condition lasted for 4 weeks; or (III) no remission (NR; no decrease in pleural effusion). Kaplan-Meier method with a log-rank test was used for survival analysis. Cox proportional hazards regression models were applied to perform univariate and multivariate analyses RESULTS: From January 2014 through December 2018, 30 patients with MPE caused by non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were treated with hyperthermic perfusion. There were no serious reportable clinical complications associated with the procedure. The response rate was 96.7%, with 63.3% experiencing PR and 33.3% achieving CR. The overall survival (OS) ranged from 2 to 46 months. The median survival was 12 months. CONCLUSIONS: IHP proved to be a feasible and safe strategy for patients with MPE in our study but it still needs to be verified with a larger, prospective and randomized trial in the future.

Background: Patients with malignant pleural effusion (MPE) have a poor prognosis. Most patients are treated with tube thoracostomy and sclerotherapy but with a not satisfactory control rate of pleural effusion. This study aims to report the effect of intrapleural hyperthermic perfusion for MPE which is a standard practice at our center.Methods: This is a retrospective study of consecutive patients with MPE treated with hyperthermic perfusion from one single Institute. The procedure was done by perfusing the pleural cavity under video-assisted thoracoscope with 43.0°C distilled water using a standard extracorporeal circuit for 60 minutes. The efficacy of treatment was classified as follows: 1. complete response (CR; no re-accumulation of pleural effusion after IPH for at least four weeks); 2. partial response (PR; pleural effusion was reduced by 50% and this situation was sustained for four weeks; 3. no consequence (NC; pleural effusion was not reduced.Results: From January 2014 through December 2018, a total of 31 patients with MPE were treated using this technique. There were no serious reportable clinical complications associated with the procedures. The response rate was 100%, with 67.7% of PR and 32.3% of CR. The survival time ranged from 2 to 46 months, with a median survival of 12 months. The survival time of the patients received TKI treatment after IHP ranged from 13 to 45 months, with a median survival of 28 months. Multivariable analysis showed that TKI treatment (P=0.013) and male gender (P=0.004) were independent prognosis factors.Conclusions: Intrapleural hyperthermic perfusion is a feasible and safe strategy for patients with malignant pleural effusion.

PURPOSE This study aims to compare the incidence of complications when using a new approach to secure an indwelling peripheral venous catheter (PVC), involving tying of the tube with a surgical knot at two places and several layers of elastic adhesive bandage, with a standard approach using sterile, transparent, and protective film. METHODS This study enrolled 311 consecutive adults undergoing thoracoscopic lobectomy under general anesthesia at Taizhou Hospital of Zhejiang Province between October 2017 and May 2018. Patients were randomized to experimental and control groups and were followed for up to 72 hours. The primary endpoint was dislodgement of the PVC. Secondary endpoints were blood in the catheter; analgesia pump obstruction alarm; time taken and cost of PVC replacement; replacement of securing materials and analgesia pump line; and time and cost of replacing them. All adverse events were recorded. FINDINGS Final analysis included 248 patients (experimental group: n = 126; control group: n = 122). PVC dislodgement was less frequent in the experimental group than in the control group. In the control group, 78.7% of patients required replacement of securing materials (costing 37 cents each time) and 13.1% required PVC replacement (costing 3.6 dollars each time), necessitating additional nursing time. No patients in the experimental group required replacement of the PVC or securing materials. Blisters were less common in the experimental group than in the control group (0% vs 9.84%, P < .001). No patients had limb edema. CONCLUSIONS This new method of securing an analgesia pump line can reduce traction on the indwelling PVC, lowering the dislodgement rate.

The texture quality of French fries is critical to the potato processing industry. Sensory evaluation via testing mouth sensation or by visual and finger spinning inspection are the primary methods to assess French fry texture quality. Instrumental texture analysis has not been practically used due to data inconsistency. This study aimed to minimize variations of instrumental analysis and identify instrumental parameters with strong correlations to a sensory evaluation to enhance the effectiveness of the texture quality assessment. This research was carried out on an industrial scale and utilized 10 potato varieties to increase the texture variation of samples. The sensory evaluation by the visual and finger spinning inspection was performed following industrial procedures and standards. Results showed instrumental crispness and crunchiness, as represented by the slope of the first significant fracture and the number of fractures of the force-distance curve in a cut test with a T-42 blade, were strongly correlated with desirable sensory attributes. Microstructure examination revealed that a low level of crust compactness was associated with instrumental crispness and crunchiness. The procedure advanced in this study had a small data variation and concluded that instrumental crispness and crunchiness are strong indicators of premium French fry texture quality.

A distributed control system of Neutral Beam Injector (NBI) on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST-NBI) is brie∞y presented in this paper. The control system is developed in accordance with the experimental operational characteristics of the EAST- NBI. The NBI control system (NBICS), which is based on the computer network technologies and classifled according to the control levels, consists of three levels: a remote monitoring layer, a server control layer, and a fleld control layer. The 3-layer architecture is capable of extending the system functions and upgrading devices. The timing system provides the reference clock of the synchronization and interlock for the EAST-NBI system. An interlock system ensures the safety of the experiment operators and fleld devices. Both of the ion sources of the beamline are designed to operate independently. This lays an important foundation for developing a control system for the second beamline on EAST. Experimental results demonstrate that the NBICS meets functional requirements of the EAST-NBI control, and makes experimental operations visual and automatic.

In order to synchronize the elements of the EAST Neutral Beam Injector (NBI) spatially located in several places, a distributed Timing System (TS) is developed in this paper. The timing system provides a clock reference for synchronization and an interlock protection of the EAST NBI system. It sends timing signals to field devices, controls the pulse widths of the timing sequences, and provides a sampling clock for the Data Acquisition System (DAS). The timing system also generates analog waveforms to control power supplies and gas supplies according to the operator's configuration. The timing system is developed on a PXI (PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation) platform consisting of a LabVIEW workstation and a timing control terminal. The timing control terminal consists of a timing node and several control interface crates. Two timing nodes are configured in one beam line. Each node is responsible for the timing sequence, analog generation and feedback control for one ion source. The architecture and implementation of the timing system are presented in this paper.

Synchronous output of one beam line's two megawatt hot cathode bucket ion sources is required when Neutral Beam Injector (NBI) works on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). Neutral Beam Injector Control System (NBICS) realizes synchronous output and asynchronous output of two ion sources with network communication and hardware triggers. And the synchronous time can be set by operator. In synchronous mode, two megawatt hot cathode bucket ion sources can produce neutral beams at any relative time with higher energy than two sources' asynchronous output. Two megawatt hot cathode bucket ion sources' synchronous output makes an important contribution to NBI system of 4-8 MW with 10-100 s pulse length and provides more and better parameters for EAST physical experiments.