Balanced metrics on Cartan and Cartan-Hartogs domains

This paper consists of two results dealing with balanced metrics (in S. Donaldson terminology) on nonconpact complex manifolds. In the first one we describe all balanced metrics on Cartan domains. In the second one we show that the only Cartan-Hartogs domain which admits a balanced metric is the complex hyperbolic space. By combining these results with those obtained in [13] (Kaehler-Einstein submanifolds of the infinite dimensional projective space, to appear in Mathematische Annalen) we also provide the first example of complete, Kaehler-Einstein and projectively induced metric g such that $\alpha g$ is not balanced for all $\alpha >0$.Comment: 11 page

Actuation and stiffening in fluid-driven soft robots using low-melting-point material

Soft material robots offer a number of advantages over traditional rigid robots in applications including humanrobot interaction, rehabilitation and surgery. These robots can navigate around obstacles, elongate, squeeze through narrow openings or be squeezed - and they are considered to be inherently safe. The ability to stiffen compliant soft actuators has been achieved by embedding various mechanisms that are generally decoupled from the actuation principle. Miniaturisation becomes challenging due to space limitations which can in turn result in diminution of stiffening effects. Here, we propose to hydraulically actuate soft manipulators with lowmelting- point material and, at the same time, be able to switch between a soft and stiff state. Instead of allocating an additional stiffening chamber within the soft robot, one chamber only is used for actuation and stiffening. Low Melting Point Alloy is integrated into the actuation chamber of a single-compartment soft robotic manipulator and the interfaced robotic syringe pump. Temperature change is enabled through embedded nichrome wires. Our experimental results show higher stiffness factors, from 9-12 opposing the motion of curvature, than those previously found for jamming mechanisms incorporated in separate additional chambers, in the range of 2-8 for the same motion

Is the outpatient management of acute diverticulitis safe and effective? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: In Western countries, the incidence of acute diverticulitis (AD) is increasing. Patients with uncomplicated diverticulitis can undergo a standard antibiotic treatment in an outpatient setting. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the safety and efficacy of the management of acute diverticulitis in an outpatient setting. Methods: A literature search was performed on PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Central and Web of Science up to September 2018. Studies including patients who had outpatient management of uncomplicated acute diverticulitis were considered. We manually checked the reference lists of all included studies to identify any additional studies. Primary outcome was the overall failure rates in the outpatient setting. The failure of outpatient setting was defined as any emergency hospital admission in patients who had outpatient treatment for AD in the previous 60 days. A subgroup analysis of failure was performed in patients with AD of the left colon, with or without comorbidities, with previous episodes of AD, in patients with diabetes, with different severity of AD (pericolic air and abdominal abscess), with or without antibiotic treatment, with ambulatory versus home care unit follow-up, with or without protocol and where outpatient management is a common practice. The secondary outcome was the rate of emergency surgical treatment or percutaneous drainage in patients who failed outpatient treatment. Results: This systematic review included 21 studies including 1781 patients who had outpatient management of AD including 11 prospective, 9 retrospective and only 1 randomized trial. The meta-analysis showed that outpatient management is safe, and the overall failure rate in an outpatient setting was 4.3% (95% CI 2.6%-6.3%). Localization of diverticulitis is not a selection criterion for an outpatient strategy (p 0.512). The other subgroup analyses did not report any factors that influence the rate of failure: previous episodes of acute diverticulitis (p = 0.163), comorbidities (p = 0.187), pericolic air (p = 0.653), intra-abdominal abscess (p = 0.326), treatment according to a registered protocol (p = 0.078), type of follow-up (p = 0.700), type of antibiotic treatment (p = 0.647) or diabetes (p = 0.610). In patients who failed outpatient treatment, the majority had prolonged antibiotic therapy and only few had percutaneous drainage for an abscess (0.13%) or surgical intervention for perforation (0.06%). These results should be interpreted with some caution because of the low quality of available data. Conclusions: The outpatient management of AD can reduce the rate of emergency hospitalizations. This setting is already part of the common clinical practice of many emergency departments, in which a standardized protocol is followed. The data reported suggest that this management is safe if associated with an accurate selection of patients (40%); but no subgroup analysis demonstrated significant differences between groups (such as comorbidities, previous episode, diabetes). The main limitations of the findings of the present review concern their applicability in common clinical practice as it was impossible to identify strict criteria of failure

Is the outpatient management of acute diverticulitis safe and effective? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: In Western countries, the incidence of acute diverticulitis (AD) is increasing. Patients with uncomplicated diverticulitis can undergo a standard antibiotic treatment in an outpatient setting. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the safety and efficacy of the management of acute diverticulitis in an outpatient setting. Methods: A literature search was performed on PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Central and Web of Science up to September 2018. Studies including patients who had outpatient management of uncomplicated acute diverticulitis were considered. We manually checked the reference lists of all included studies to identify any additional studies. Primary outcome was the overall failure rates in the outpatient setting. The failure of outpatient setting was defined as any emergency hospital admission in patients who had outpatient treatment for AD in the previous 60 days. A subgroup analysis of failure was performed in patients with AD of the left colon, with or without comorbidities, with previous episodes of AD, in patients with diabetes, with different severity of AD (pericolic air and abdominal abscess), with or without antibiotic treatment, with ambulatory versus home care unit follow-up, with or without protocol and where outpatient management is a common practice. The secondary outcome was the rate of emergency surgical treatment or percutaneous drainage in patients who failed outpatient treatment. Results: This systematic review included 21 studies including 1781 patients who had outpatient management of AD including 11 prospective, 9 retrospective and only 1 randomized trial. The meta-analysis showed that outpatient management is safe, and the overall failure rate in an outpatient setting was 4.3% (95% CI 2.6%-6.3%). Localization of diverticulitis is not a selection criterion for an outpatient strategy (p 0.512). The other subgroup analyses did not report any factors that influence the rate of failure: previous episodes of acute diverticulitis (p = 0.163), comorbidities (p = 0.187), pericolic air (p = 0.653), intra-abdominal abscess (p = 0.326), treatment according to a registered protocol (p = 0.078), type of follow-up (p = 0.700), type of antibiotic treatment (p = 0.647) or diabetes (p = 0.610). In patients who failed outpatient treatment, the majority had prolonged antibiotic therapy and only few had percutaneous drainage for an abscess (0.13%) or surgical intervention for perforation (0.06%). These results should be interpreted with some caution because of the low quality of available data. Conclusions: The outpatient management of AD can reduce the rate of emergency hospitalizations. This setting is already part of the common clinical practice of many emergency departments, in which a standardized protocol is followed. The data reported suggest that this management is safe if associated with an accurate selection of patients (40%); but no subgroup analysis demonstrated significant differences between groups (such as comorbidities, previous episode, diabetes). The main limitations of the findings of the present review concern their applicability in common clinical practice as it was impossible to identify strict criteria of failure

Berezin quantization of homogeneous bounded domains

We prove that a homogeneous bounded domain admits a Berezin quantization

Soft Robotics. Bio-inspired Antagonistic Stiffening

Soft robotic structures might play a major role in the 4th industrial revolution. Researchers have demonstrated advantages of soft robotics over traditional robots made of rigid links and joints in several application areas including manufacturing, healthcare, and surgical interventions. However, soft robots have limited ability to exert larger forces and change their stiffness on demand over a wide range. Stiffness can be achieved as a result of the equilibrium of an active and a passive reaction force or of two active forces antagonistically collaborating. This paper presents a novel design paradigm for a fabric-based Variable Stiffness System including potential applications

Laparoscopic peritoneal lavage: A definitive treatment for diverticular peritonitis or a "bridge" to elective laparoscopic sigmoidectomy?

To this day, the treatment of generalized peritonitis secondary to diverticular perforation is still controversial. Recently, in patients with acute sigmoid diverticulitis, laparoscopic lavage and drainage has gained a wide interest as an alternative to resection. Based on this backdrop, we decided to perform a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of peritoneal lavage in perforated diverticular disease. A bibliographic search was performed in PubMed for case series and comparative studies published between January 1992 and February 2014 describing laparoscopic peritoneal lavage in patients with perforated diverticulitis. A total of 19 articles consisting of 10 cohort studies, 8 case series, and 1 controlled clinical trial met the inclusion criteria and were reviewed. In total these studies analyzed data from 871 patients. The mean follow-up time ranged from 1.5 to 96 months when reported. In 11 studies, the success rate of laparoscopic peritoneal lavage, defined as patients alive without surgical treatment for a recurrent episode of diverticulitis, was 24.3%. In patients with Hinchey stage III diverticulitis, the incidence of laparotomy conversion was 1%, whereas in patients with stage IV it was 45%. The 30-day postoperative mortality rate was 2.9%. The 30-day postoperative reintervention rate was 4.9%, whereas 2% of patients required a percutaneous drainage. Readmission rate after the first hospitalization for recurrent diverticulitis was 6%. Most patients who were readmitted (69%) required redo surgery. A 2-stage laparoscopic intervention was performed in 18.3% of patients. Laparoscopic peritoneal lavage should be considered an effective and safe option for the treatment of patients with sigmoid diverticulitis with Hinchey stage III peritonitis; it can also be consider as a “bridge” surgical step combined with a delayed and elective laparoscopic sigmoidectomy in order to avoid a Hartmann procedure. This minimally invasive staged approach should be considered for patients without systemic toxicity and in centers experienced in minimally invasive surgery techniques. Further evidence is needed, and the ongoing RCTs will better define the role of the laparoscopic peritoneal lavage/drainage in the treatment of patients with complicated diverticulitis

Towards a Computed-Aided Diagnosis System in Colonoscopy: Automatic Polyp Segmentation Using Convolution Neural Networks

Early diagnosis is essential for the successful treatment of bowel cancers including colorectal cancer (CRC), and capsule endoscopic imaging with robotic actuation can be a valuable diagnostic tool when combined with automated image analysis. We present a deep learning rooted detection and segmentation framework for recognizing lesions in colonoscopy and capsule endoscopy images. We restructure established convolution architectures, such as VGG and ResNets, by converting them into fully-connected convolution networks (FCNs), fine-tune them and study their capabilities for polyp segmentation and detection. We additionally use shape-from-shading (SfS) to recover depth and provide a richer representation of the tissue’s structure in colonoscopy images. Depth is incorporated into our network models as an additional input channel to the RGB information and we demonstrate that the resulting network yields improved performance. Our networks are tested on publicly available datasets and the most accurate segmentation model achieved a mean segmentation interception over union (IU) of 47.78% and 56.95% on the ETIS-Larib and CVC-Colon datasets, respectively. For polyp detection, the top performing models we propose surpass the current state-of-the-art with detection recalls superior to 90% for all datasets tested. To our knowledge, we present the first work to use FCNs for polyp segmentation in addition to proposing a novel combination of SfS and RGB that boosts performance

Diagnosis and management of nonvariceal upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage: European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE) Guideline

This Guideline is an official statement of the European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE). It addresses the diagnosis and management of nonvariceal upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage (NVUGIH). Main Recommendations MR1. ESGE recommends immediate assessment of hemodynamic status in patients who present with acute upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage (UGIH), with prompt intravascular volume replacement initially using crystalloid fluids if hemodynamic instability exists (strong recommendation, moderate quality evidence). MR2. ESGE recommends a restrictive red blood cell transfusion strategy that aims for a target hemoglobin between 7 g/dL and 9 g/dL. A higher target hemoglobin should be considered in patients with significant co-morbidity (e. g., ischemic cardiovascular disease) (strong recommendation, moderate quality evidence). MR3. ESGE recommends the use of the Glasgow-Blatchford Score (GBS) for pre-endoscopy risk stratification. Outpatients determined to be at very low risk, based upon a GBS score of 0 - 1, do not require early endoscopy nor hospital admission. Discharged patients should be informed of the risk of recurrent bleeding and be advised to maintain contact with the discharging hospital (strong recommendation, moderate quality evidence). MR4. ESGE recommends initiating high dose intravenous proton pump inhibitors (PPI), intravenous bolus followed by continuous infusion (80 mg then 8 mg/hour), in patients presenting with acute UGIH awaiting upper endoscopy. However, PPI infusion should not delay the performance of early endoscopy (strong recommendation, high quality evidence). MR5. ESGE does not recommend the routine use of nasogastric or orogastric aspiration/lavage in patients presenting with acute UGIH (strong recommendation, moderate quality evidence). MR6. ESGE recommends intravenous erythromycin (single dose, 250 mg given 30 - 120 minutes prior to upper gastrointestinal [GI] endoscopy) in patients with clinically severe or ongoing active UGIH. In selected patients, pre-endoscopic infusion of erythromycin significantly improves endoscopic visualization, reduces the need for second-look endoscopy, decreases the number of units of blood transfused, and reduces duration of hospital stay (strong recommendation, high quality evidence). MR7. Following hemodynamic resuscitation, ESGE recommends early (≤ 24 hours) upper GI endoscopy. Very early (< 12 hours) upper GI endoscopy may be considered in patients with high risk clinical features, namely: hemodynamic instability (tachycardia, hypotension) that persists despite ongoing attempts at volume resuscitation; in-hospital bloody emesis/nasogastric aspirate; or contraindication to the interruption of anticoagulation (strong recommendation, moderate quality evidence). MR8. ESGE recommends that peptic ulcers with spurting or oozing bleeding (Forrest classification Ia and Ib, respectively) or with a nonbleeding visible vessel (Forrest classification IIa) receive endoscopic hemostasis because these lesions are at high risk for persistent bleeding or rebleeding (strong recommendation, high quality evidence). MR9. ESGE recommends that peptic ulcers with an adherent clot (Forrest classification IIb) be considered for endoscopic clot removal. Once the clot is removed, any identified underlying active bleeding (Forrest classification Ia or Ib) or nonbleeding visible vessel (Forrest classification IIa) should receive endoscopic hemostasis (weak recommendation, moderate quality evidence). MR10. In patients with peptic ulcers having a flat pigmented spot (Forrest classification IIc) or clean base (Forrest classification III), ESGE does not recommend endoscopic hemostasis as these stigmata present a low risk of recurrent bleeding. In selected clinical settings, these patients may be discharged to home on standard PPI therapy, e. g., oral PPI once-daily (strong recommendation, moderate quality evidence). MR11. ESGE recommends that epinephrine injection therapy not be used as endoscopic monotherapy. If used, it should be combined with a second endoscopic hemostasis modality (strong recommendation, high quality evidence). MR12. ESGE recommends PPI therapy for patients who receive endoscopic hemostasis and for patients with adherent clot not receiving endoscopic hemostasis. PPI therapy should be high dose and administered as an intravenous bolus followed by continuous infusion (80 mg then 8 mg/hour) for 72 hours post endoscopy (strong recommendation, high quality evidence). MR13. ESGE does not recommend routine second-look endoscopy as part of the management of nonvariceal upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage (NVUGIH). However, in patients with clinical evidence of rebleeding following successful initial endoscopic hemostasis, ESGE recommends repeat upper endoscopy with hemostasis if indicated. In the case of failure of this second attempt at hemostasis, transcatheter angiographic embolization (TAE) or surgery should be considered (strong recommendation, high quality evidence). MR14. In patients with NVUGIH secondary to peptic ulcer, ESGE recommends investigating for the presence of Helicobacter pylori in the acute setting with initiation of appropriate antibiotic therapy when H. pylori is detected. Re-testing for H. pylori should be performed in those patients with a negative test in the acute setting. Documentation of successful H. pylori eradication is recommended (strong recommendation, high quality evidence). MR15. In patients receiving low dose aspirin for secondary cardiovascular prophylaxis who develop peptic ulcer bleeding, ESGE recommends aspirin be resumed immediately following index endoscopy if the risk of rebleeding is low (e. g., FIIc, FIII). In patients with high risk peptic ulcer (FIa, FIb, FIIa, FIIb), early reintroduction of aspirin by day 3 after index endoscopy is recommended, provided that adequate hemostasis has been established (strong recommendation, moderate quality evidence)