pylori infection.”
“Objective: (1) To understand speech perception and communication ability through real telephone calls by Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants and compare them to live-voice perception, (2) to report the general condition of telephone use of this population, and (3) to investigate the factors that correlate with telephone speech perception performance.

Methods: Fifty-six children with over 4 years of implant use (aged 6.8-13.6 years, mean duration

8.0 years) took three speech perception tests administered using telephone BEZ235 supplier and live voice to examine sentence, monosyllabic-word and Mandarin tone perception. The children also filled out a questionnaire survey investigating everyday telephone use. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare the scores between live-voice and telephone tests, and Pearson’s this website test to examine the correlation between them.

Results: The mean scores were 86.4%, 69.8% and 70.5% respectively for sentence, word and tone recognition over the telephone. The corresponding live-voice mean scores were 94.3%, 84.0% and 70.8%. Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed the sentence

and word scores were significantly different between telephone and live voice test, while the tone recognition scores were not, indicating tone perception was less worsened by telephone transmission than words and sentences. Spearman’s test showed that chronological age and duration of SNS-032 chemical structure implant use were weakly correlated with the perception test scores. The questionnaire survey showed 78% of the children could initiate phone calls and 59% could use the telephone 2 years after implantation.

Conclusion: Implanted children are potentially capable

of using the telephone 2 years after implantation, and communication ability over the telephone becomes satisfactory 4 years after implantation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“The alpha 2 agonist clonidine has become a popular drug for premedication in children. Effects and pharmacokinetics after oral, rectal, and intravenous administration are well known. The aim of this study was to investigate the absorption pharmacokinetics of clonidine nasal drops in children.

Thirteen ASA I pediatric patients received after induction of anesthesia 4 mcg.kg(-1) of clonidine by the nasal route. Blood samples were taken during a 12-h period and plasma levels of clonidine were analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Data were calculated by a computer-aided curve-fitting program.

Plasma pharmacokinetics following administration of clonidine nasal drops showed a considerable interindividual variability and absorption was delayed and limited. A total of 95% confidence intervals for maximum plasma concentration and time to achieve maximum plasma concentration were 0.4-0.6 ng.ml(-1) and 1.4-3.0 h, respectively.