Introduction: Tumour related factors are well known as risk factors for survival after pancreatoduodenectomy (PD). In a time when the role for neoadjuvant treatment is discussed also in primary resectable patients, the influence of preoperative variables is of interest. The aim was to examine preoperative factors influence on early mortality following PD.Materials: Patients registered in the Swedi

Airborne emissions from disc brakes adversely affect the air quality in urban areas of EU. The emissions come from the wear of the pads and rotors in disc brakes. The wear of disc brakes depends on the contact situation between the pads and rotors. During braking, secondary contact plateaus are created on both the pads and rotors contact surfaces. Literature reports numerical studies of the creati

AimsPatients with advanced heart failure (AdHF) who are ineligible for heart transplantation (HTx) can become candidates for treatment with a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) in some countries, but not others. This reflects the lack of a systematic analysis of the usefulness of LVAD systems in this context, and of their benefits, limitations and cost-effectiveness. The SWEdish evaluation of l

BackgroundPrevious studies have reported superior hemodynamic performance with bovine bioprosthetic aortic valves compared with porcine valves. However, conflicting results mean the long-term effect on survival is not well known. The aim of this study was to examine long-term survival, rate of aortic valve reoperations, and heart failure hospitalizations after surgical aortic valve replacement (AV

In implementations of the functional data methods, the effect of the initial choice of an orthonormal basis has not been properly studied. Typically, several standard bases such as Fourier, wavelets, splines, etc. are considered to transform observed functional data and a choice is made without any formal criteria indicating which of the bases is preferable for the initial transformation of the da

Anthropomorphic phantoms are models of real or virtual parts of the body, organ or tissue, represented by tissue-equivalent materials that aim to provide a realistic and accurate representation of their anatomy and properties. The aim of this study is to evaluate experimentally the suitability of 3D printed materials in the production of both, physical breast phantoms and abnormalities, to be used

Pin-on-disc tribometers are used by the academia to study friction and wear of disc brake materials. It has been debated if a simplified set-up could reproduce the friction and wear behaviour of the disc brake assembly. The aim of this paper is to investigate and discuss this topic by comparing the friction surfaces with diverse microscopy techniques. Also, coefficients of friction, wear, and coll

AI solutions seem to appear in any and all application domains. As AI becomes more pervasive, the importance of quality assurance increases. Unfortunately, there is no consensus on what artificial intelligence means and interpretations range from simple statistical analysis to sentient humanoid robots. On top of that, quality is a notoriously hard concept to pinpoint. What does this mean for AI qu

A mobile stroke unit (MSU) is an ambulance, where stroke patients can be diagnosed and treated. Recently, placement of MSUs has been studied focusing on either maximum population coverage or equal service for all patients, termed efficiency and equity, respectively. In this study, we propose an unconstrained optimization model for the placement of MSUs, designed to introduce a tradeoff between eff