Efficacy of intragastric balloon vs liraglutide as bridge to surgery in super-obese patients.

Abstract Introduction Bariatric surgery is a safe and effective treatment for obesity, although in super obese patients (BMI ≥ 50 kg/m2) it can become challenging for anatomical and anaesthesiologic issues. Several bridging therapies have been proposed to increase preoperative weight loss and decrease perioperative morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of different two-stage approaches in super obese patients: laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) following preoperative liraglutide therapy vs LSG with preoperative IGB (intragastric balloon) during a 1-year follow-up. Methods Clinical records of 86 patients affected by super-obesity who underwent two stage approach between January 2019 and January 2022 were retrospectively reviewed using a prospectively maintained database. Patients were separated into two groups: those managed with preoperative IGB and those with liraglutide 3.0 mg prior to LSG. Weight (Kg), BMI (kg/m2), %EWL and %EWBL were reported and compared between the two groups at the end of bridging therapy, at 6th month and 12th month postoperatively. Postoperative complications were recorded. Results Forty-four patients underwent IGB insertion prior to LSG, while forty-two were treated with liraglutide. There were no statistical differences in baseline weight and BMI. At the end of pre-operative treatment, the group treated with intragastric balloon reported a significant reduction in BMI (47.24 kg/m2 vs 53.6 kg/m2; p<0.391) compared to liraglutide group. There were no differences recorded between the two groups concerning post-operative complications. At 6 months the liraglutide group had lower %EWL (15.8 vs 29.84; p<0.05) and %EWBL (27.8 vs 55.6; p<0.05) when compared to intragastric balloon group. At 12 months the intragastric balloon preserved the with higher %EWL (39.9 vs 25; p<0.05) and %EWBL (71.2 vs 42; p<0.05). Conclusion A two-stage therapeutic approach with intragastric balloon prior to laparoscopy sleeve gastrectomy in super-obese patients could be considered an attractive alternative to liraglutide as bridging therapy before bariatric surgery

First operations of the LNS heavy ions facility

Abstract A heavy ion facility is now available at Laboratorio Nazionale del Sud (LNS) of Catania. It can deliver beams with an energy up to 100 MeV/amu. The facility is based on a 15MV HVEC tandem and a K = 800 superconducting cyclotron as booster. During the last year, the facility came into operation. A 58Ni beam delivered by the tandem has been radially injected in the SC and then has been accelerated and extracted at 30 MeV/amu. In this paper the status of the facility together with the experience gained during the commissioning will be extensively reported

Towards a Muon Collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work.Comment: 118 pages, 103 figure

Towards a muon collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work

Conceptual Design of a Soft X‐ray SASE‐FEL Source

FELs based on SASE are believed to be powerful tools to explore the frontiers of basic sciences, from physics to chemistry to biology. Intense R&D programs have started in the USA and Europe in order to understand the SASE physics and to prove the feasibility of these sources. The allocation of considerable resources in the Italian National Research Plan (PNR) brought about the formation of a CNR‐ENEA‐INFN‐University of Roma "Tor Vergata" study group. A conceptual design study has been developed and possible schemes for linac sources have been investigated, bringing to the SPARX proposal. We report in this paper the results of a preliminary start to end simulation concerning one option we are considering based on an S‐band normal conducting linac with high brightness photoinjector integrated in a RF compressor

Towards a muon collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work

Erratum: Towards a muon collider

The original online version of this article was revised: The additional reference [139] has been added. Tao Han’s ORICD ID has been incorrectly assigned to Chengcheng Han and Chengcheng Han’s ORCID ID to Tao Han. Yang Ma’s ORCID ID has been incorrectly assigned to Lianliang Ma, and Lianliang Ma’s ORCID ID to Yang Ma. The original article has been corrected

Somatotopy of nociceptive responses in the human spinal cord

This Letter to the Editor of the journal Pain addresses the study by Nash and colleagues (Pain 2013;154:776-781), reporting fMRI somatotopic responses to noxious stimulations within the human spinal cord. Spinal cord fMRI, although a rapidly expanding field, is still hampered by significant technical shortcomings. This paper is welcome, in that it introduces significant technical novelty. However, more details are needed about the methods followed, in order to grasp the procedures and to assess their actual efficacy. Moreover, the spatial specificity of the responses is not fully supported by the results, both regarding the spinal cord site and side