The surgical benefit of minimally invasive tendo Achilles repair (n=25) with early weight-bearing mobilisation after rupture of the tendo Achilles was compared with operative treatment using an open technique (n=34) with full weight-bearing after 8 weeks of surgical repair. The minimally invasive technique provided no evidence of wound problems and a functional benefit from early weightbearing mobilisation. However, we noted that increased postoperative morbidity in terms of wound infection (n=7) leading to delayed wound healing and wound pain requiring opiate-based analgesia post-operatively in the open repair group may have an additional impact on the patients and health care providers. This study showed that the mini-invasive open surgical repair of the Achilles tendon with the Achillon™ instrument and early weight-bearing mobilisation in an orthosis for the accelerated rehabilitation may offer cost-effectiveness and less financial burden on the health care provider in terms of associated nursing and physiotherapy costs.Résumé Le bénéfice chirurgical de la réparation du tendon d'Achille par voie mini-invasive (n=25), permettant un appui avec mobilisation précoce est comparé au traitement de la rupture par voie sanglante conventionnelle (n=34) avec un appui différé à 8 semaines après la réparation chirurgicale. Il est important de noter l'augmentation de la morbidité avec infection profonde (n=7), défaut de cicatrisation et douleur nécessitant, notamment des traitements analgésiques à base d'opiacés. Cependant cette technique par voie mini-invasive ne semble pas, à l'évidence, entraîner plus de problèmes mais, au contraire est bénéfique du fait de la mobilisation et de l'appui précoces. Ce travail montre que la réparation par voie mini-invasive du tendon d'Achille avec la technique Achillon™ et un appui précoce en orthèse permettent une récupération rapide et surtout un rapport coût bénéfice intéressant.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. ABSTRACT Marital Violence and Women's Employment and Property Status: Evidence from North Indian VillagesDominant development policy approaches recommend women's employment on the grounds that it facilitates their empowerment, which in turn is believed to be instrumental in enhancing women's well-being. However, empirical work on the relationship between women's employment status and their well-being as measured by freedom from marital violence yields an ambiguous picture. Motivated by this ambiguity, this paper draws on testimonies of men and women and data gathered from rural Uttar Pradesh, to examine the effect of women's employment and asset status as measured by their participation in paid work and their ownership of property, respectively, on spousal violence. Unlike the existing literature, we treat women's work status and violence as simultaneously determined and find that women's engagement in paid work and ownership of property, are associated with sharp reductions in marital violence.JEL Classification: J12, J15, J16

Telemetry systems enable researchers to continuously monitor physiological signals in unrestrained, freely moving small rodents. Drawbacks of common systems are limited operation time, the need to house the animals separately, and the necessity of a stable communication link. Furthermore, the costs of the typically proprietary telemetry systems reduce the acceptance. The aim of this paper is to introduce a low-cost telemetry system based on common radio frequency identification technology optimized for battery-independent operational time, good reusability, and flexibility. The presented implant is equipped with sensors to measure electrocardiogram, arterial blood pressure, and body temperature. The biological signals are transmitted as digital data streams. The device is able of monitoring several freely moving animals housed in groups with a single reader station. The modular concept of the system significantly reduces the costs to monitor multiple physiological functions and refining procedures in preclinical research.

The authors report the use of nanocrystalline silver (Acticoat 7, Smith and Nephew, London, UK) in an acute surgical wound to prevent localized skin necrosis due to infection, thereby avoiding skin grafting as a secondary procedure. Two patients were successfully treated with Acticoat 7 dressings without using systemic antimicrobials after developing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection in the surgical site. Despite a history of smoking and incision through scar tissues, the wound did not progress into deep infection nor was there recurrence of infection at 2 years follow-up. The intention was to use this particular dressing to assess the effect of silver on infected keratinocytes in an acute wound environment. It is possible that the use of Acticoat 7 may reduce the bacterial loading at the wound site, thereby decreasing a propensity for skin necrosis caused by the infective process. This case report demonstrates that the acute surgical wound with impending cutaneous necrosis due to localized infection may be treated without oral antimicrobials.

This report presents the difficulties encountered in managing a wound colonized with methycillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) following a complex knee surgery in an elderly female patient with generalized psoriasis. The patient's chronic wound was successfully treated with nanocrystalline silver-releasing dressings (Acticoat). The patient did not develop a deep-seated infection, nor was removal of the implant needed. However, the wound infection persisted for 6 months. At 3 years follow-up, the patient has satisfactory skin over the implant on the knee.

Battery-less passive sensor tags based on RFID or NFC technology have achieved much popularity in recent times. Passive tags are widely used for various applications like inventory control or in biotelemetry. In this paper, we present a new RFID/NFC frontend IC (integrated circuit) for 13.56 MHz passive tag applications. The design of the frontend IC is compatible with the standard ISO 15693/NFC 5. The paper discusses the analog design part in details with a brief overview of the digital interface and some of the critical measured parameters. A novel approach is adopted for the demodulator design, to demodulate the 10% ASK (amplitude shift keying) signal. The demodulator circuit consists of a comparator designed with a preset offset voltage. The comparator circuit design is discussed in detail. The power consumption of the bandgap reference circuit is used as the load for the envelope detection of the ASK modulated signal. The sub-threshold operation and low-supply-voltage are used extensively in the analog design—to keep the power consumption low. The IC was fabricated using 0.18 μm CMOS technology in a die area of 1.5 mm × 1.5 mm and an effective area of 0.7 normalmm2. The minimum supply voltage desired is 1.2 V, for which the total power consumption is 107 μW. The analog part of the design consumes only 36 μW, which is low in comparison to other contemporary passive tags ICs. Eventually, a passive tag is developed using the frontend IC, a microcontroller, a temperature and a pressure sensor. A smart NFC device is used to readout the sensor data from the tag employing an Android-based application software. The measurement results demonstrate the full passive operational capability. The IC is suitable for low-power and low-cost industrial or biomedical battery-less sensor applications. A figure-of-merit (FOM) is proposed in this paper which is taken as a reference for comparison with other related state-of-the-art researches.

Low power, low cost inductively powered passive biotelemetry system involving fully customized RFID/NFC interface base SoC has gained popularity in the last decades. However, most of the SoCs developed are application specific and lacks either on-chip computational or sensor readout capability. In this paper, we present design details of a programmable passive SoC in compliance with ISO 15693/NFC5 standard for biomedical applications. The integrated system consists of a 32-bit microcontroller, a sensor readout circuit, a 12-bit SAR type ADC, 16 kB RAM, 16 kB ROM and other digital peripherals. The design is implemented in a 0.18 µm CMOS technology and used a die area of 1.52 mm × 3.24 mm. The simulated maximum power consumption of the analog block is 592 µW. The number of external components required by the SoC is limited to an external memory device, sensors, antenna and some passive components. The external memory device contains the application specific firmware. Based on the application, the firmware can be modified accordingly. The SoC design is suitable for medical implants to measure physiological parameters like temperature, pressure or ECG. As an application example, the authors have proposed a bioimplant to measure arterial blood pressure for patients suffering from Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD).

The safe and effective treatment of patients accessing multiple NHS services relies upon efficient communication between primary care, secondary care, and out of hours providers. There is a theoretical risk to patient safety from delays in these processes, to which paper communications are particularly vulnerable. When letters are received they must be reviewed and prioritised in order of clinical importance, a process that requires both time and clinical resources. This is relevant to the challenge of resource allocation to maximise patient benefit. This retrospective study investigated the impact on patient safety of 249 clinical letters reporting routine clinical encounters in secondary care and out of hours services that were delayed by an average of 18–24 months to a suburban London general practice. No clinical harm could be attributed to the delay. This small study did not suggest delays in routine communications pose a significant risk to patient safety. Conversely, it questions the efficiency and benefit to patients of prioritising clinical time to reviewing routine letters. The adoption of fully integrated, shared electronic patient records with the function to highlight clinically urgent or important communications might ease clinician workload, to the ultimate benefit of patient care.