Efficacy of cefminox in the treatment of bacterial infections

In an open trial, 1841 patients were treated with mainly 1 g of cefminox twice a day in adults or 20-30 mg/kg three or four times a day in children for up to 14 days. The clinical efficacy was assessed in 1560 patients (1256 adults, 304 children) and the efficacy rates were as follows: 82.3% in respiratory tract infections (n:525), 85.7% in biliary tract infections (n:87), 66.4% in urinary tract infections (n:509), 92.1% in gynaecological infections (n:126), 88.1% in peritonitis (n:84), 74.9% in all infections (n:1560). The overall bacterial response rates in single infections were 81.5% (81.5% for Staphylococcus aureus, 98.4% for Escherichia coli, 98.6% for Haemophilia influenzae and 38.8% for Pseudomonas aeruginosa). The safety of cefminox was assessed in 1831 patients. Adverse side-effects were reported in 35 patients (1.9%), the most frequent being rash.     

Assessment of the effect of respiration on the esophageal variceal blood flow using transesophageal real-time two-dimensional Doppler echography

The effect of spontaneous respiration on esophageal variceal flow was evaluated using 5 MHz color flow Doppler echography. Twenty-one patients with esophageal varices, of whom 19 had liver cirrhosis (95%), were examined with a convex array transesophageal transducer. The direction and velocity of the variceal flow during inhalation and exhalation could be inferred from the color, its brightness or the Doppler time-velocity spectrum. The mean intravariceal flow velocity was significantly higher during inhalation (20.6 cm per sec) than in exhalation (11.5 cm per sec; p less than 0.01). The direction of intravariceal flow at any given point did not change throughout the respiratory cycle. However, a combination of real-time color flow imaging and the doppler time-velocity spectrum revealed that, when the sampling point was near the peak of the curve of the varix, the spectrum falsely indicated reversal of direction between inhalation and exhalation. This semiinvasive method, which yields anatomical and physiological information simultaneously, appears to be very useful for the study of variceal flow.