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Place: France; International audience

Type III frontal sinusotomy: surgical technique, indications, outcomes, a multi-university retrospective study of 120 cases. Draf type III is one of the advanced endonasal endoscopic surgeries for the frontal sinus. It was popularised by W. Draf in 1991. The procedure - which is also known as the modified endoscopic Lothrop procedure - aims to create the largest possible anteroposterior and lateral to lateral opening between both frontal sinuses and the nasal cavities. This requires the resection of the medial floor of both frontal sinuses, the intersinus septum and the superior nasal septum. The authors present a retrospective study including a cohort of 120 patients who underwent surgery in six Belgian university ENT departments. Mean follow-up was 24.6 months (range: 5-36 months). This paper describes the surgical procedure and reviews the indications, comorbidities, outcomes and complications of the type III frontal sinusotomy. Some correlations are also established with the data published in the worldwide literature. The authors conclude that the Draf III is a demanding procedure requiring considerable expertise in endoscopic sinus surgery. The procedure is effective with a success rate of 87.5%. Indeed, 12.5% of patients only experienced closure of the neoostium while 20% of all the patients had unchanged or worse symptomatology. The percentage of post-operative complications is 7.5%. All complications were managed successfully

Place: France; International audience; We report the case of a 7-year-old boy with acute status asthmaticus requiring mechanic ventilation in the pediatric intensive care unit. He developed a brain hemorrhage during the course of his illness. We discuss the mechanisms that may have precipitated this neurological complication.

An experimental investigation of the performance of natural, mechanical and hybrid ventilation systems was carried out in an urban measurement campaign during summer period 2002 in Athens, Greece. Three building apartments characterized by different geometry and located in two street canyons with different orientation were studied. The aim was to show the impact of the urban environment on the ventilation efficiency of natural and hybrid systems. The tracer gas decay method has been applied during the experimental procedures with one (N2O) and two tracer gases (N2O and SF6). Based on the results of air-exchange rates using multizone methods from a previous study, a further analysis is performed in the present work for the evaluation of the performance of different ventilation systems in urban conditions, with emphasis on the ventilation efficiency. A methodology to estimate the air-exchange efficiency, on the basis of room mean age of air, in multitracer gas experiments is introduced. In spite of the reduced wind speeds due to the canyon effect, appreciable ventilation rates can be obtained with natural ventilation, especially when cross-ventilation with two or more windows is measured. For single-sided ventilation or under calm conditions, hybrid ventilation has only a slight advantage over natural, either in terms of air-exchange rates or of air-exchange efficiencies. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A number of field and indoor experimental procedures were performed in three typical apartment buildings located in two street canyons characterized by different urban features, during summer period 2002 in Athens. Natural, mechanical and hybrid ventilation measurements were performed based on the tracer gas method on a circular basis within the 24-h period. The indoor exchange rates are estimated using both single and multi-zone approaches based on the mass balance of two tracer gases (N2O and SF6). The experiments pointed out that, in spite of the canyon effect, appreciable ventilation rates can be obtained with natural ventilation, especially when cross ventilation with two or more windows is measured. In the presence of cross ventilation and with sufficient ambient wind speeds, natural ventilation is shown to be more effective, with regard to ACH, in comparison with hybrid. However, when only single-sided ventilation is possible or under calm conditions hybrid ventilation has a slight advantage over natural. A comparative analysis is made for the total air change rates estimated with the single and multi-zone methodologies. The multi-zone approach, in spite of its better theoretical basis, has been found more sensitive to the accuracy of the measured concentrations, especially when a single tracer is used. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The effect of the summer heat island of the western part of the Greater Athens area on cooling energy and peak power is investigated using the building energy estimating software DOE2.1.E and measured values of temperature and other meteorological data at selected sites. A very large difference between the cooling energy and peak power in the western Greater Athens area on one hand and the eastern edge of the heat island on the other hand, is evidenced for the year 1997. The difference is shown to be smaller for the year 1998 though, which was characterized by an exceptionally hot summer, which apparently affected the eastern part of the Greater Athens area more than the western part. The calculations made based on the typical meteorological year of Athens without taking the heat island related effects into account are shown to underestimate both energy consumption and peak power.

This study is intended to demonstrate the versatility and feasibility of custom-made oligosaccharide- exposing neoglycoconjugates including histo-blood group epitopes in various human lesions, including nasal polyps. The binding of the biotinylated probes was determined on formalin-fixed paraffinembedded sections from archive materials. The general aspects of our results may be interpreted as follows: the neoglycoconjugates used here can readily detect differences in the ability of cells to bind glycan residues in tissue sections, thereby enabling the extent of the binding capacity of various types of human lesions to be compared. Furthermore, the reactivity to glycan may reflect characteristics of the cells and their environment. The investigation into pathological disorders with respect to the binding capacity of these carrierimmobilized mono- or oligosaccharide structures derived from custom-made synthesis or biochemical purification is based on the prospect of translating progress in this field into the establishment of potentially beneficial procedures for medical diagnosis and pathological classification.