Cervical spine trauma imaging: is an additional swimmers projection of the cervico-thoracic junction justified?

NICE Head and Cervical Spine Guidelines (2007) advocate three-view Plain Radiography over CT for the initial assessment of cervical spine trauma. However, they provide no indication of what protocol should be utilised when the cervico-thoracic junction is not visualised by the first attempt. This study aimed to evaluate current practice. A retrospective audit of trauma patients was performed over a two month period (N=107). The results demonstrated that whilst all patients received the standard AP, AP open mouth and lateral projections, 74% of cases failed to demonstrate the cervico-thoracic junction. 67% of this population received an additional Swimmers View with a 74% success rate. The research findings highlight the practical limitations of the plain radiography technique. Whilst further training could perhaps reduce the non-visualisation rate of the cervico-thoracic junction, radiographers could in most cases predict the need for the additional swimmers projection and likelihood of success as part of the justification process. Whilst acknowledging the increase in thyroid dose by utilising CT, direct referral is perhaps justified in these cases, particularly if the patient presents with the clinical symptoms of cervical spine trauma

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git

A half-day introduction to version control with Git and GitHub for researchers, developed and maintained by the Software Carpentry team