Fernando Moraes Neto

Transplante cardíaco: a experiência do Instituto do Coraçäo de Pernambuco com 35 casos

Material and Methods: From August/ 1991 to February/ 2000, 35 orthotopic heart transplants were performed at the Heart Institute of Pernambuco. There were 29 male and 6 female patients ranging in age from 15 to 69 years (mean: 46.9 yr.). Recipient diagnoses included ischemic cardiomyopathy in 18, idiopatic dilated cardiomyopathy in 13, mixomatous disease in 2, rheumatic valvar disease in 1 and Chagas` disease in 1. All were in the final stage of heart failure (functional class III or IV of the New York Heart Association) and the ejection fraction ranged from 16 to 27% (mean: 20.9 ± 2.9). Seventeen (48.5%) patients had had previous cardiac operations. The classical surgical technique described by Lower and Shumway, in 1960, was used in all cases. Mean graft ischemic time was 91 ± 21 minutes (ranged from 60 to 180 minutes). Results: There were 7 (20%) deaths in the early postoperative period. Non-fatal postoperative complications occurred in other 13 patients including 5 episodes of rejection. Mean follow-up period of the 28 survivors was 31.2 months (ranged from 1 to 68 mo.) There were 14 late deaths owing to rejection (4), infection (4), graft coronary artery disease (2), chronic renal failure (2) and sudden death (2). The actuarial survival estimated is 70% at 1 year and 30% at 5 years. Conclusion: It is concluded that cardiac transplantation program is feasible in our community but poorer results in comparison to international experience should be expected owing to social problems of the recipient population.

Chaos in Quantum Weightless Neuron Node Dynamics

In order to investigate the dynamics of a quantum weightless neuron node we feed its output back as input. Due to the fact that controlled operators used in the neuron circuit usually generate entanglement, we propose a mathematical method to extract the output at time t and build from that output the input at time t + 1 . As a result the time evolution is a real-valued nonlinear map with one real parameter. The dynamics orbits are plotted showing acute sensitivity to initial conditions clearly exhibiting nonlinearity by just looking at amplitude graphs. The fractal geometry and regions of convergence are discussed by their Julia Set images and a new measure for model comparison is put forward.

Ressecção de lipoma do septo interventricular

We report the case of an asymptomatic 43-year-old-man with a lipoma of the interventricular septum. Diagnosis was established during routine medical examination by 2-dimensional echocardiography and confirmed by computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. The patient underwent successful resection of the tumor.

Experiência com a técnica de ampliação do folheto posterior para correção da insuficiência mitral reumática na infância

OBJECTIVE To describe the experience with the technique of posterior leaflet extension in children suffering of rheumatic mitral regurgitation. METHODS Between April 2002, and October 2007, 30 children, mean age 11.3 years, underwent correction of mitral insufficiency with the technique of posterior leaflet extension with a pericardial patch. Eight also received a Carpentier ring. Six children had aortic valve disease and were submitted to Ross operation (five cases) or valve replacement with an aortic homograft. All were in functional class III or IV (NYHA classification). RESULTS There was one death. One child presented severe hemolysis in the postoperative period and was submitted to mitral valve replacement. Clinical evolution in the remaining patients was good. CONCLUSIONS Posterior leaflet extension of the mitral valve seems to be an effective surgical technique for correction of rheumatic mitral insufficiency in children.

An efficient static gesture recognizer embedded system based on ELM pattern recognition algorithm

Abstract Millions of people throughout the world describe themselves as being deaf. Some of them suffer from severe hearing loss and consequently use an alternative manner with which to communicate with society by means of either written or visual language. There are several sign languages capable of dealing with such a need. Nonetheless, a communication gap still exists even when using such languages, since only a small fraction of the population is able to use them. Over the last few years, due to the increasing need for universal accessibility when using computational resources, gesture recognition has been widely researched. Thus, in an attempt to reduce this communication gap, our approach proposes a computational solution in order to translate static gesture symbols into text symbols, through computer vision, without the use of hand sensors or gloves. In order to guarantee the highest quality, with emphasis on the reliability of the system and real-time translation, we have developed an approach based on the Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) pattern recognition algorithms fully implemented in hardware, and have assessed it to measure these two metrics. Hardware components were designed in order to perform the best image processing and pattern recognition tasks used within the project. As a case study, and so as to validate the technique, a recognition system for the Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) was implemented. Besides ensuring that this approach could be used for any static hand gesture symbol recognition, our main goal was to guarantee fast, reliable gesture recognition for communication between humans. Experimental results have demonstrated that the system is able to recognize LIBRAS symbols with an accuracy of 97%, a response time of 6.5ms per letter recognition, and using only 43% (about 64,851 logic elements) of the FPGA area.

Analysis of Quantum Neural Models

On this paper, we briefly analyze and compare some models of quantum artificial neural networks. Quantum operators must be linear ones; we verify that no unitary operators are used in two models of quantum perceptron. We also analyze a model of quantum weightless neural network and a quantum complex neural network. These models have quantum architecture and learning, but we show that they use nonlinear operators in the learning process. This study, toward a comparative method, tries to clarify important aspects in models of quantum neural networks as well as understand more its operation.

Fitting Parameters on Quantum Weightless Neuron Dynamics

A parametric analysis of a quantum neuron node dynamics is proposed using an output qubit extraction protocol employed in previous works. The proposed classification method is composed of 5 different types of dynamics which explain the parameter changing behavior. The initial conditions analysis for each dynamics type is investigated. This parametric analysis gives a better understanding of the dynamics suggesting how fine-tune the system parameters can influence the system expected behaviour allowing e.g. For applications in patten recognition and information retrieval.

Solving NP-complete Problems Using Quantum Weightless Neuron Nodes

Despite neural networks have super-Turing computing power, there is no known algorithm for obtaining a classical neural networks that solves NP-complete problems in polynomial time. However this paper shows that a quantum neural networks model coupled with a non-unitary operator can solve 3-SAT in polynomial time. The proposed method uses a network circuit to represent a Boolean logic function and a non-unitary operator to decide the satisfiability. The parameters of the network is set deterministically and manually, accordingly to the problem at hand with neither quantum nor classical learning.

Correção total da tétrade de Fallot no primeiro ano de vida

From January 1996, to November 1997, 15 consecutive infants ranging in age from 3 to 11 months (mean: 6 months) and weigh ing from 5 to 9 kilograms (mean: 7.2 kilograms) underwent elective total repair of tetralogy of Fallot. Thirteen had symptoms of hypoxemia and two were acyanotic. Definitive diagnosis was established in all cases by two-dimensional echocardiography. Intracardiac correction was accomplished with conventional cardiopulmonary bypass and moderate hypothermia. Myocardial protection was obtained by cold cristaloide cardioplegia infused into the aorta and topical hypothermia of the heart. Bypass time ranged from 50 to 125 minutes (mean: 84 minutes) and aorta cross clamp time ranged from 32 to 86 minutes (mean: 56 minutes). Intracardiac repair was accomplished through right ventriculotomy in 14 cases and by a transatrial approach in one. A right ventricular outflow patch was used in 11 cases but was extended across the pulmonary valve ring only in four. Transannular pulmonary gradient after correction ranged from 2 to 25 mmHg (mean: 12 mmHg). There were no deaths or major complications in this series. It is concluded that intracardiac correction of the tetralogy of Fallot in the first year of life may be accomplished with low mortality and may have advantages over the two-stage approach.

Diagnóstico e tratamento cirúrgico do teratoma intrapericárdico

We report two cases of intrapericardial teratoma, a rare cardiac tumor, usually found in neonates and young infants, which may cause respiratory distress, large pericardial effusions and cardiac compression leading to intra-uterine or neonatal death. Both cases were diagnosed noninvasively by echocardiogram, in a 3 month-old girl with signs of cardiac tamponade, and by fetal echocardiography, in a 38 week pregnant woman. Successful surgical removal of the tumor was undertaken in both patients at the ages of 3 months and 3 days of life, respectively. Histology confirmed the diagnosis of teratoma. It is emphasized the diagnostic accuracy of achocardiography and the importance of early surgical treatment in the management of intrapericardial teratoma.