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Zhong-Guo Fan,1,* Xiao-Fei Gao,1,2,* Li-Wen Chen,1 Xiao-Bo Li,1,2 Ming-Xue Shao,1,2 Qian Ji,1 Hao Zhu,1 Yi-Zhi Ren,1 Shao-Liang Chen,1,2 Nai-Liang Tian1,2 1Department of Cardiology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, 2Department of Cardiology, Nanjing Heart Center, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: The effects of intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) usage in patients with acute myocardial infarction remain controversial. This study sought to evaluate the outcomes of IABP usage in these patients.Methods: Medline, EMBASE, and other internet sources were searched for relevant clinical trials. The primary efficacy endpoints (in-hospital, midterm, and long-term mortality) and secondary endpoints (reinfarction, recurrent ischemia, and new heart failure in the hospital) as well as safety endpoints (severe bleeding requiring blood transfusion and stroke in-hospital) were subsequently analyzed.Results: Thirty-three clinical trials involving 18,889 patients were identified. The risk of long-term mortality in patients suffering from acute myocardial infarction was significantly decreased following IABP use (odds ratio [OR] 0.66, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.48–0.91, P=0.010). Both in-hospital and midterm mortality did not differ significantly between the IABP use group and no IABP use group (in-hospital: OR 0.87, 95% CI: 0.59–1.28, P=0.479; midterm: OR 1.12, 95% CI: 0.53–2.38, P=0.768). IABP insertion was not associated with the risk reduction of reinfarction, recurrent ischemia, or new heart failure. However, IABP use increased the risk of severe bleeding requiring blood transfusion (OR 2.05, 95% CI: 1.29–3.25, P=0.002) and stroke (OR 1.71, 95% CI: 1.04–2.82, P=0.035). In the thrombolytic therapy and cardiogenic shock subgroups, reduced mortality rates following IABP use were observed.Conclusion: IABP insertion is associated with f

The present work reports on a feasibility study commissioned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences of China to explore various possible mission options to detect gravitational waves in space alternative to that of the eLISA/LISA mission concept. Based on the relative merits assigned to science and technological viability, a few representative mission options descoped from the ALIA mission are considered. A semi-analytic Monte Carlo simulation is carried out to understand the cosmic black hole merger histories and the possible scientific merits of the mission options in probing the light seed black holes and their coevolution with galaxies in early Universe. The study indicates that, by choosing the armlength of the interferometer to be three million kilometers and shifting the sensitivity floor to around one-hundredth Hz, together with a very moderate improvement on the position noise budget, there are certain mission options capable of exploring light seed, intermediate mass black hole binaries at high redshift that are not readily accessible to eLISA/LISA, and yet the technological requirements seem to within reach in the next few decades for China.