General Methods. Any external or interconnecting cable, where a ground is part of the circuit, shall carry a ground wire in the cable terminated at both ends in the same manner as the other conductors. In no case, except with coaxial cables, shall the shield be depended upon for a current-carrying ground connection. Static and safety grounds shall not be used to complete electrical circuits. A point on the electrically conductive chassis or equipment frame shall serve as the common tie point for static and safety grounding. The path from the tie point to ground shall:
a) Be continuous and permanent.
b) Have ample carrying capacity to conduct safely any fault currents that may be expected, to be imposed on it by internally generated faults.
c) Have impedance sufficiently low to limit the potential above ground and to facilitate the operation of the over current devices in the circuits, and;
d) Have sufficient mechanical strength of the material to minimize possibility of ground disconnection.
General Methods i. Reagents
ii. Bacterial Transformations
General Methods. The most commonly used methods and techniques are described in this chapter. Methods that were used less frequently will be described in detail in their relevant chapters.
General Methods. THE MR XXXXXX Some of the patients used in the comparative studies between FFR and CMR were recruited to take part in the MR-INFORM clinical trial. (XxxxxxxxXxxxxx.xxx Identifier:NCT01236807) This is an international randomised controlled trial of FFR vs. CMR to guide the management of patients with coronary artery disease and is still currently recruiting. Currently there are over 600 patients recruited to this study, which aims to recruit 918 patients. Analysis of subgroups where there is discordance between the two tests is part of the exploratory endpoints of the main trial. One of the disadvantages of using these patients is that the power calculations are based on the primary endpoint of the main clinical trial. However, these patients are a particularly interesting sub group as they have had both an invasive and non-invasive assessment of ischaemia. In addition, some patients were recruited from a second site, Porto in Portugal under the direction of Dr Xxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx. In this chapter I will describe the general methods of the main MR-INFORM trial. My involvement in this study was writing the protocol, finalising the trial design including all important decisions on the nature of the trial, definition of end points, statistical power etc. Furthermore, I proceeded to get regulatory approval for the study, and set up enough sites to ensure adequate recruitment both nationally and internationally. Additionally, I recruited patients from our site and was responsible for the CMR scanning and follow up of these patients. The following chapter is adapted from the following publication:
3.1 BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE FOR STUDY Over the last few years, there have been a number of landmark trials questioning previously accepted management strategies for patients with stable coronary artery disease. The COURAGE(67) trial has shown no benefit of routine revascularisation both in terms of prognosis and long term symptom relief in patients with stable angina. However, subgroup analysis of the COURAGE data(68), suggests that the prognosis of patients receiving optimal medical therapy (OMT) alone or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and OMT is correlated to their ischaemic burden and the amount of ischaemia reduction achieved by therapy, as assessed by SPECT. The assessment of prognosis, however, was exploratory, and not associated with outcome when adjusted for treatment. There is evidence that the presence of stress-induced myocardial perfusion defects ide...
