Spatial assessment of fishing effort around European marine reserves: implications for successful fisheries management.

We examined the spatial dynamic of artisanal fishing fleets around five European marine protected areas (MPAs) to derive general implications for the evaluation of MPAs as fisheries management tools. The coastal MPAs studied were located off France, Malta and Spain and presented a variety of spatial designs and processes of establishment. We developed a standardized methodology to define factors influencing effort allocation and to produce fishing effort maps by merging GIS with geostatistical modelling techniques. Results revealed that in most cases the factors "distance to the no-take", "water depth", and "distance to the port" had a significant influence on effort allocation by the fishing fleets. Overall, we found local concentration of fishing effort around the MPA borders. Thus, neglecting the pattern of fishing effort distribution in evaluating MPA benefits, such as spillover of biomass, could hamper sound interpretation of MPAs as fisheries management tools.

Inaccuracy of a continuous arterial pressure waveform monitor when used for congenital cardiac catheterization.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the accuracy of a continuous cardiac output monitor (FloTrac sensor) for measuring cardiac index in children with congenital heart disease undergoing cardiac catheterization. Cardiac index is a critical hemodynamic parameter measured during catheterizations in children with congenital heart disease. This has been challenging to measure accurately and many clinicians rely on predictive equations for calculating cardiac index. DESIGN: Prospective, nonrandomized trial. SETTING: Tertiary care congenital heart center. PATIENTS: Consecutive participants ≤18 years old undergoing clinically indicated cardiac catheterizations from September 2014 through August 2015. INTERVENTIONS: Oxygen consumption was measured using the Vmax Encore 229 monitor attached to the ventilator circuit. The FloTrac transducer with third generation software was connected to a pigtail catheter in the descending aorta and cardiac index was obtained. OUTCOME MEASURES: Cardiac index by the Fick equation using measured oxygen consumption was compared to cardiac index from the FloTrac sensor using paired t-test and Bland-Altman analysis. RESULTS: 39 participants (median age 5.1 years, 1.5-18.3, 64% female) were studied. Cardiac index by FloTrac was higher than cardiac index by Fick (6.4 ± 3.4 vs 3.7 ± 1.2 L/min/m2 , P < .001). Bland-Altman analysis showed a consistent overestimation of cardiac index by FloTrac which worsened as cardiac index increased (mean bias 2.7 L/min/m2 , 95% limits of agreement -4.2, 9.5). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study show that the FloTrac sensor provides cardiac index measures which are not accurate enough to justify use in children with congenital heart disease undergoing catheterization. Further studies may allow for modifications of the algorithms to obtain more accurate cardiac index in this population.