Simultaneous reconstruction of the oral commissure, lip and buccal mucosa with microvascular transfer of combined first-second toe web and dorsalis pedis flap

The reconstruction of oral commissure, lip and mucosa defects following tumour resection is a challenging task to the reconstructive surgeon owing to the increasing aesthetic and functional demands. The authors describe a case in which the use of combined first-second toe web with dorsalis pedis flap was transferred and an optimal result was achieved for the oral commissure, lip and buccal mucosa following resection of squamous cell carcinoma and local flap failur

Simultaneous pectoralis major-latissimus dorsi myocutaneous flap: An option of reconstruction for open sternal wounds

SummaryManagement of the open sternal wound after surgery is a challenge. We report a retrospective series of cases with regard to the management of sternal wounds according to our own experience and a review of the related literature. A retrospective chart review from June 2007 to February 2010 of patients with infective and open sternal wounds after surgery was performed. There were seven patients with a previous history of type A aortic dissection treated with the Bentall operation, thymoma with excision, mitral and tricuspid regurgitation with double valve replacement, and acute myocardial infarction with a ventricular-assist device or coronary artery bypass graft. All wound cultures of the seven patients showed positive findings. All patients received the latissimus dorsi (LD) myocutaneous flap for lower sternal wound reconstruction under the decubitus position and a contralateral pedicled rotated pectoralis major (PM) myocutaneous flap for the upper sternal wound. The residual wound was covered with a split-thickness skin graft. The mean age of the seven patients, including four males and three females, was 58.1 years (range: 33–73 years). The mean follow-up was 37.7 months (range: 30–44 months). The average time span between the final débridement and the flap reconstruction procedure was 5.2 ± 1.8 days. The harvested area of LD myocutaneous flap ranged from 25 × 10 cm2 to 15 × 8 cm2, and the area of PM myocutaneous flap ranged from 15×15 cm2 to 10 × 5 cm2. Four of seven patients had an omental flap initially, but salvage surgery was performed using a simultaneous pectoralis major-LD flap. Three cases underwent simultaneous PM-LD flap directly. One patient expired on postoperative Day 4 because of sudden ventricular fibrillation, but no postoperative complications were noted in the other six patients. With long-term follow-up, all patients survived without significant complications. The simultaneous PM-LD myocutaneous flap is a reliable option for open sternal wound reconstruction

APEX2S: A Two-Layer Machine Learning Model for Discovery of host-pathogen protein-protein Interactions on Cloud-based Multiomics Data

Presented by the avalanche of biological interactions data, computational biology is now facing greater challenges on big data analysis and solicits more studies to mine and integrate cloud-based multiomics data, especially when the data are related to infectious diseases. Meanwhile, machine learning techniques have recently succeeded in different computational biology tasks. In this article, we have calibrated the focus for host-pathogen protein-protein interactions study, aiming to apply the machine learning techniques for learning the interactions data and making predictions. A comprehensive and practical workflow to harness different cloud-based multiomics data is discussed. In particular, a novel two-layer machine learning model, namely APEX2S, is proposed for discovery of the protein-protein interactions data. The results show that our model can better learn and predict from the accumulated host-pathogen protein-protein interactions

Segmenting Taipei’s Real Estate Data – A Cluster Analysis

Data mining has been widely used for knowledge discovery from large amount of data. In this paper, clustering analysis is applied to Taiwan government open data platform (DATA.GOV.TW), segmenting the real estate data so as to understand the real estate market structure in Taiwan. This paper use design science research methodology (DSRM) as research method. The result provides valuable insights into market structures in Taipei City that has limited addressed in past research and contributes to real estate agencies and practitioners an insight-seeking approach that they can follow to generate values from data