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We studied the safety and feasibility of intracoronary sonotherapy (IST) and its effect on the coronary vessel at 6 months. Thirty‐seven patients with stable or unstable angina were included (40 lesions). The indication was de novo lesion (n = 26), restenosis (n = 2), in‐stent restenosis (n = 11), and a total occlusion of a venous bypass graft. After successful angioplasty, IST was performed using a 5 Fr catheter with three serial ultrasound transducers operating at 1 MHz. IST was successfully performed in 36 lesions (success rate, 90%). IST exposure time per lesion was 718 ± 127 sec. During hospital stay, one patient died due to a bleeding complication. At 6‐month follow‐up, one patient experienced acute myocardial infarction, eight patients underwent repeat PTCA. No patient underwent CABG. Late lumen loss was 1.05 ± 0.70 mm with a restenosis rate of 25%. IVUS analysis revealed a neointima burden of 25% ± 11%. IST can be applied safely and with high acute procedural success. Sonotherapy‐related major adverse events were not observed. Late lumen loss and neointimal growth were similar to conventional PTCA approaches. These results justify the initiation of randomized clinical efficacy studies. Catheter Cardiovasc Interv 2003;60:9–17. © 2003 Wiley–Liss, Inc.

There is paucity of information on how lung physiology and cellular inflammation differs between non-smoking-COPD (NS-COPD) and smoking-COPD (S-COPD). Aim: To evaluate and compare physiological and induced sputum cellular inflammatory profiles of NS-COPD and S-COPD. Methods: 47 NS-COPD and 39 S-COPD subjects underwent spirometry, Impulse-oscillometry (IOS), body plethysmography and lung-diffusion (single breath), and sputum-induction to measure the cellular-inflammatory profile. Normally distributed and non-normally distributed data were compared using means (SD) and medians (IQR), using parametric and non-parametric tests respectively. Results: There were no differences in % predicted values for FEV1, FVC, FEF25-75/FVC, SRaw, SGaw, RV, TLC, RV/TLC, ITGV, FRC, R5Hz, R20Hz, and DLCO SB and DLCO/VA between NS-COPD and S-COPD (all p values>0.05). The only physiological difference observed was in median % predicted X5Hz values on IOS; S-COPD had higher X5 compared to NS-COPD [1908.3Hz (1308.3, 2987.5), vs 983.3Hz (461.1, 2091.7), p=0.002]. S-COPD had greater median total inflammatory cells/gm sputum and absolute neutrophils/gm sputum compared to NS-COPD [7.2(3.6, 10.3)x106/gm vs 4.1(2.3, 6.9)x106/gm, p=0.01] and [5.5(2.8, 8.7)x106/gm vs 2.8(1.6, 6.0)x106/gm, p=0.01] respectively. No differences were observed between numbers of lymphocytes, eosinophils and macrophages in S-COPD and NS-COPD (all p values>0.05). Conclusion: S-COPD and NS-COPD show similar lung function derangements as measured by lung volumes, airway resistance and lung-diffusion, apart from an increased airway reactance and greater total and neutrophil cell counts in the induced sputum in S-COPD compared to NS-COPD.

Introduction: Among super-resolved microscopy (SRM) methods, single molecule localisation microscopy techniques, such as photo-activated localisation microscopy (PALM) [l] and stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) [2], enable imaging beyond the classical diffraction limit to gain new insights in subcellular biological processes with relatively simple instrumentation. This has led to a number of low-cost instruments, e.g. for STORM microscopy [3-6], which can benefit from an array of software tools for the single molecule localisation microscopy (SMLM) data analysis [7]. Our low-cost “easySTORM approach [4] implements dSTORM [8] with multimode diode lasers and optical fibres to provide STORM images with fields of view up to ~125 μm diameter using μManager [9] to control the image data acquisition and ThunderSTORM [10] to analyse the SMLM data. We and others [11,12] are motivated to develop automated SMLM for high content analysis (HCA) that enable rapid imaging of sample arrays, allows statistical analysis of samples that may vary in terms of labelling and biological heterogeneity and enable moderate throughput screening applications.

The RESTOR trial (R Stent Efficacy and Safety Trial by ORBUS) is an efficacy and safety evaluation of the R Stent for treatment of patients with a single de novo coronary lesion < 25 mm in length in a coronary artery of 2.75-4.0 mm diameter. This new stent utilizes a patented dual helix design for radial strength and flexibility. The aim of the study was to assess major adverse cardiac events (MACE) and angiographic outcome at 6 months after implantation. From May to December 2000 a total of 121 patients with symptomatic stable or unstable angina pectoris or documented silent ischemia and a significant single, de novo coronary lesion (average reference vessel diameter 2.84 +/- 0.54 mm, average lesion length 10.53 +/- 3.70 mm) were included in two Dutch centers. All patients were treated with clopidogrel 75 mg/day for 1 month and with aspirin greater than or equal to 100 mg/day. The angiographic success rate (< 30% diameter stenosis post-procedure) was 98.3%. Procedural success (angiographic success without in-hospital MACE) was 95.9%. The 6-month MACE rate was 12.4%. 101 of the 121 patients had an angiographic follow-up at 6 months. Minimal lumen diameter pre-/post-procedure and at follow-up was 0.98 +/- 0.37, 2.64 +/- 0.38 and 1.85 +/- 0.68 mm, respectively. The resulting binary restenosis rate in this population was 20.8%. The coronary R Stent is safe and effective as a primary device for the treatment of native coronary lesions in patients with stable or unstable angina pectoris, and well suitable as a platform for a drug eluting stent.

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