Rule of four: an anatomic and value-based approach to stent-graft inventory for blunt thoracic aortic injury.

Purpose: As blunt thoracic aortic injury (BTAI) treatment has shifted from open to thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR), logistical challenges exist in creating and maintaining inventories of appropriately sized stent-grafts, including storage demands, shelf-life management and cost. We hypothesized that most injured aortas can be successfully repaired with a narrow range of stent-graft sizes and present a value-based anatomic approach to optimizing inventory.

Methods: CT-scans of all patients with BTAI admitted to our Level I trauma center from Apr 2010-Dec 2018 were reviewed.

Quasi-objective eddy visualization from sparse drifter data.

We employ a recently developed single-trajectory Lagrangian diagnostic tool, the trajectory rotation average ( TRA ¯ ), to visualize oceanic vortices (or eddies) from sparse drifter data. We apply the TRA ¯ to two drifter data sets that cover various oceanographic scales: the Grand Lagrangian Deployment and the Global Drifter Program. Based on the TRA ¯, we develop a general algorithm that extracts approximate eddy boundaries.