Role of Mental Disorders in Nosocomial Infections after Hip Fracture Treatment

The association between mental disorders (MDs) and iatrogenic complications after hip fracture surgery has been poorly studied. Among iatrogenic complications, nosocomial infections (NIs) are a major factor in hip fracture surgery. The aim of this paper was to determine whether patients with a MD and a hip fracture develop more NIs after hip surgery than patients with no MD. We studied 912 patients who underwent surgery for a hip fracture (223 patients with a MD who underwent surgery for a hip fracture and 689 control patients without a MD who also underwent surgery for a hip fracture) and followed them after surgery. Univariable and multivariable analyses were performed using simple and multiple logistic regression analysis (confidence interval, crude and adjusted odds ratios, and P value). We found that MDs, gender, and comorbidities were not associated with a higher risk of developing a NI after surgery for a hip fracture. Only age increases the risk of a NI

Situación actual del cultivo del aguacate (persea americana mill.) en el Estado de México, México

El objetivo de este trabajo fue determinar la situación actual de la producción y comercialización del cultivo del aguacate en el sur del Estado de México en 2011. El tamaño de muestra se determinó considerando el universo total de inscritos en la base de datos de la SEDAGRO conformada por 2,814 productores. Con base en la metodología de poblaciones finitas, el tamaño de muestra fue 338, a los cuales se les aplicó un cuestionario. La información cuantitativa de la encuesta se capturó en una base de datos y se procesó mediante Microsoft Office Excel 2007©, para obtener medidas de tendencia central. En el Estado de México 85% de la población de estudio son pequeños productores y tan solo 15% cuenta con extensiones superiores a 10 ha. La producción se basa en una explotación univarietal con predominio del 90% de la variedad Hass. El incremento en plantaciones de aguacate se ha realizado en 77% con planta proveniente del estado de Michoacán. La producción se destina para el consumo nacional, se comercializa principalmente en las centrales de abasto de Toluca, Estado de México, Distrito Federal y en mercados regionales

Latex vascular injection as method for enhanced neurosurgical training and skills

BackgroundTridimensional medical knowledge of human anatomy is a key step in the undergraduate and postgraduate medical education, especially in surgical fields. Training simulation before real surgical procedures is necessary to develop clinical competences and to minimize surgical complications.MethodsLatex injection of vascular system in brain and in head-neck segment is made after washing out of the vascular system and fixation of the specimen before and after latex injection.ResultsUsing this latex injection technique, the vascular system of 90% of brains and 80% of head-neck segments are well-perfused. Latex-injected vessels maintain real appearance compared to silicone, and more flexible vessels compared to resins. Besides, latex makes possible a better perfusion of small vessels.ConclusionsLatex vascular injection technique of the brain and head-neck segment is a simulation model for neurosurgical training based on real experiencing to improve surgical skills and surgical results

Neglected Tropical Diseases outside the Tropics

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) have been targeted due to their prevalence and the burden of disease they cause globally, but there has been no significant focus in the literature on the subject of NTDs as a group in immigrants and travelers, and no specific studies on the emerging phenomenon of imported NTDs. We present the experience of a Tropical Medicine Unit in a major European city, over a 19-year period, describing and comparing NTDs diagnosed amongst immigrants, travelers and travelers visiting friends and relatives (VFRs). NTDs were diagnosed outside tropical areas and occurred more frequently in immigrants, followed by VFR travelers and then by other travelers. The main NTDs diagnosed in immigrants were onchocerciasis, Chagas disease and ascariasis; most frequent NTDs in travelers were schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis and ascariasis, and onchocerciasis and schistosomiasis in VFRs. Issues focusing on modes of transmission outside endemic areas and how eradication programs for some NTDs in endemic countries may have an impact in non-tropical Western countries by decreasing disease burden in immigrants, are addressed. Adherence to basic precautions such as safe consumption of food/water and protection against arthropod bites could help prevent many NTDs in travelers

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Möbius Syndrome: Surgical Treatment for Eyelid Dysfunction

Introduction: Möbius syndrome is a heterogeneous congenital disorder that is linked to bilateral palsies of the cranial nerves VI and VII, resulting in congenital facial paralysis sometimes associated with impaired ocular abduction. Case Report: We present the case of a 44-year-old woman with Möbius syndrome and inferior recurrent keratitis secondary to scleral show in both eyes. We decided to use a cartilage graft from the ear in the inferior eyelid to avoid eyelid retraction and scleral show. Discussion: Patients with Möbius syndrome have a severe dysfunction of their facial mimic. Their treatment must be individualized, depending on their age, clinical examination and symptoms