Assessment of the requisites of microbiology based infectious disease training under the pressure of consultation needs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Training of infectious disease (ID) specialists is structured on classical clinical microbiology training in Turkey and ID specialists work as clinical microbiologists at the same time. Hence, this study aimed to determine the clinical skills and knowledge required by clinical microbiologists.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was carried out between June 1, 2010 and September 15, 2010 in 32 ID departments in Turkey. Only patients hospitalized and followed up in the ID departments between January-June 2010 who required consultation with other disciplines were included.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 605 patients undergoing 1343 consultations were included, with pulmonology, neurology, cardiology, gastroenterology, nephrology, dermatology, haematology, and endocrinology being the most frequent consultation specialties. The consultation patterns were quite similar and were not affected by either the nature of infections or the critical clinical status of ID patients.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results of our study show that certain internal medicine subdisciplines such as pulmonology, neurology and dermatology appear to be the principal clinical requisites in the training of ID specialists, rather than internal medicine as a whole.</p

A survey analysis of thoracic surgeons in Turkey on mediastinal investigation of lung cancer

A total of 59 general thoracic surgeons of 21 academically based thoracic surgery centres in Turkey were surveyed to identify the attitudes toward mediastinal investigations in patients with lung cancer. The surgeons were asked 16 questions in five separate groups by survey questionnaire. Analyses of the replies were as follows: Group I: 37 (62.7%) of the respondents were working in 11 centres where >100 patients are admitted or referred for lung cancer annually. More than 50 thoracotomies are performed for lung cancer annually in one third of the centres in which 28 (47.5%) respondents work. Group II: Among the diagnostic methods for evaluating mediastinum, surgeons most commonly used the computed tomography, mediastinoscopy, mediastinotomy and scalene lymph node biopsy. Invasive staging was done routinely by ten (16.9%) and selectively by 44 (74.6%). Group III: In patients with preoperatively histologically proven ipsilateral mediastinal lymph node involvement, 39 (66.1%) were advocates of operating. When the lymph node(s) was found to be positive at operation, 33 of them (55.9%) gave the decision with respect to the number, size and presence of pericapsular invasion of the node(s), while 24 (40.7%) decided to perform lung resection in every situation. Group IV: All accessible mediastinal nodes were said to be removed at thoracotomy by 37 (62.7%). Group V: Currently available methods for mediastinal investigation were found to be partially sufficient by 37 (62.7%). The most important factor in predicting postoperative survival was selected as nodal status by 27 (45.8%). It is noticed that nearly all thoracic surgeons in Turkey perform mediastinal investigation preoperatively in patients with lung cancer, however, the impact of lymph node status needs to be more commonly appreciated

Computational Pipeline for the PGV-001 Neoantigen Vaccine Trial

This paper describes the sequencing protocol and computational pipeline for the PGV-001 personalized vaccine trial. PGV-001 is a therapeutic peptide vaccine targeting neoantigens identified from patient tumor samples. Peptides are selected by a computational pipeline that identifies mutations from tumor/normal exome sequencing and ranks mutant sequences by a combination of predicted Class I MHC affinity and abundance estimated from tumor RNA. The personalized genomic vaccine (PGV) pipeline is modular and consists of independently usable tools and software libraries. We hope that the functionality of these tools may extend beyond the specifics of the PGV-001 trial and enable other research groups in their own neoantigen investigations

An experimental and numerical investigation on low velocity impact behavior of composite plates

This paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation on low velocity impact response of S2 glass/epoxy and aramid/epoxy composite plates. Two different impact energy levels, 20 J and 30 J, were considered for impact tests. The commercial software called LS-DYNA was used in order to perform numerical simulations. The experimental and numerical results were found to be in good agreement