High congenital hip dislocation in adults - arthroplasty and functional results

Objective: Retrospective case-control study on the authors' experience regarding arthroplasty in high congenital dislocations of the hip in adults. Methods: Sample with 11 high congenital hip dislocations (Hartofilakidis type C) that occurred in seven patients, who were submitted to hip arthroplasty by the same surgeon and with the same surgical technique. Mean follow-up period was 4.32 ± 2.67 years (minimum one year) and all patients were evaluated by the same examiner. Results: All the arthroplasties had cementless fixation, with application of screwed acetabular cups, conical femoral stems, and a metal-polyethylene articular pars. In every patient, shortening femoral osteotomies were performed at subtrochanteric or supracondylar locations. The mean Harris Hip Score at the last evaluation was 88.55 ± 4.50 (range 81-94). The mean time with high dislocation of the hip (42.91 ± 14.59 years, range 19-68) showed a significant inverse correlation with Harris Hip Score (r = 0.80; p = 0.003). All patients reported important relief of pain complaints and are capable of ambulation without any external support. In the unilateral dislocations, leg length discrepancies were fully corrected; in the bilateral cases, isometric limbs were achieved in all patients. All osteotomies consolidated, with a mean interval of 3.27 ± 0.47 months. There were complications in 18.18% of the sample: one iatrogenic intraoperative fracture of the greater trochanter and a transitory sciatic neurapraxia. Conclusion: Despite being a demanding surgery with a reportedly high complication rate, total hip arthroplasty in high congenital dislocations, when properly indicated and technically correctly performed, allows an improvement in function and quality of life.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Intrapelvic trauma by metallic wire: Surgical challenges faced

Introduction: Penetrating pelvic trauma is rare and presents as one of the most difficult challenges to trauma surgeons. Case Report: We present an unusual case of a 23-year-old male suffering a penetrating pelvic trauma by a projected metal wire. The wire was found in intrapelvic location, caused no internal organs injury and was safelyremoved using a Pfannenstiel extended approach. Conclusion: Preoperative assessment of foreign body position is mandatory to set-up an efficient surgical procedure. The surgeon must have a profound knowledge of pelvic anatomy in order to choose the best option for the foreign body removal without any iatrogenic lesions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Super-resolution far-field ghost imaging via compressive sampling

Much more image details can be resolved by improving the system's imaging resolution and enhancing the resolution beyond the system's Rayleigh diffraction limit is generally called super-resolution. By combining the sparse prior property of images with the ghost imaging method, we demonstrated experimentally that super-resolution imaging can be nonlocally achieved in the far field even without looking at the object. Physical explanation of super-resolution ghost imaging via compressive sampling and its potential applications are also discussed.Comment: 4pages,4figure

Pé de Charcot – Um caso clínico

A artropatia neuropática de Charcot é uma doença osteoarticular primária progressiva que atinge mais frequentemente o pé e tornozelo. Trata-se de uma patologia característica de doentes diabéticos de longa evolução e com mau controlo glicémico. Aceita-se hoje em dia que esta condição tem origem numa combinação de hiperémia/inflamação óssea, osteopénia e défices sensitivo-motores, ou seja, uma combinação das clássicas teorias neuro-traumática e neuro-vascular, com a nova teoria inflamatória. A doença pode estar na fase aguda, activa ou inflamatória, verificando-se um pé edemaciado, com calor e eritema, ou na fase crónica ou inactiva, onde são características deformidades acentuadas devido a luxações e fracturas. O diagnóstico faz-se sobretudo pela clínica, podendo a radiografia, a ressonância magnética e a cintigrafia óssea serem úteis, nomeadamente em termos de diagnóstico diferencial. Os objectivos do tratamento são analgesia, estabilidade articular, pé plantígrado, marcha e prevenção de úlceras, deformidades e amputação. A opção de tratamento depende da fase de doença, local, gravidade e grau de ulceração. Para a fase aguda reserva-se imobilização com bota gessada por 2-4 meses e descarga, enquanto na fase crónica está indicada imobilização com ortóteses tornozelo-pé ou calçado especializado ou correcção cirúrgica das deformidades em casos específicos. Casos de dor incapacitante, exostose, úlcera recorrente, deformidades acentuadas e luxações ou fracturas, têm indicação de correcção cirúrgica, que pode ir desde exostosectomia, a artrodese ou mesmo amputação. Apresenta-se um caso clínico de um caso de pé de Charcot com evolução rápida de destruição osteo-articular em 6meses. Quanto a classificações trata-se de Sanders-Frykberg grau III-IV (sub-talar, médiotársica),Brodsky grau II (sub-talar, talo-navicular, calcâneo-cuboideia) e Eichenholtz grau III (estadio crónico/consolidação - Deformidade). Face a deformidade acentuada instável e dor incapacitante, opta-se por tratamento cirúrgico com artrodese tripla do tornozelo com encavilhamento calcâneo-tibial retrógrado. Intraoperatoriamente verifica-se destruição osteo-articular necrótica acentuada do astrágalo e parcial do calcâneo, é então feita astragalectomia, encavilhamento calcâneo-tibial retrógrado e artrodese com 2 parafusos canulados: calcâneo-tibial e fíbulo-tíbio-navicular, bem como aplicação de aloenxerto. É feita imobilização com bota gessada, que é renovada em consulta a cada 2 semanas sob vigilância. A imobilização e descarga são mantidas até sinais deconsolidação. Quanto a prognóstico é conhecida a taxa elevada de complicações deste tipo de procedimento no pé de Charcot, estando relatadas percentagens superiores a 70%, nomeadamente de infecção, mau posicionamento de material cirúrgico, úlcera recorrente e fractura. São fundamentais para boa evolução manter a descarga e imobilização prolongada, a renovação de imobilização e inspecção frequente do pé e um bom controlo da glicémia. Face à localização e presença de deformidade acentuada e lesão cutânea, este caso clínico apresenta um prognóstico reservado, podendo eventualmente por complicações progredir para amputação

Perceptual Compressive Sensing

Compressive sensing (CS) works to acquire measurements at sub-Nyquist rate and recover the scene images. Existing CS methods always recover the scene images in pixel level. This causes the smoothness of recovered images and lack of structure information, especially at a low measurement rate. To overcome this drawback, in this paper, we propose perceptual CS to obtain high-level structured recovery. Our task no longer focuses on pixel level. Instead, we work to make a better visual effect. In detail, we employ perceptual loss, defined on feature level, to enhance the structure information of the recovered images. Experiments show that our method achieves better visual results with stronger structure information than existing CS methods at the same measurement rate.Comment: Accepted by The First Chinese Conference on Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision (PRCV 2018). This is a pre-print version (not final version

Signatures of arithmetic simplicity in metabolic network architecture

Metabolic networks perform some of the most fundamental functions in living cells, including energy transduction and building block biosynthesis. While these are the best characterized networks in living systems, understanding their evolutionary history and complex wiring constitutes one of the most fascinating open questions in biology, intimately related to the enigma of life's origin itself. Is the evolution of metabolism subject to general principles, beyond the unpredictable accumulation of multiple historical accidents? Here we search for such principles by applying to an artificial chemical universe some of the methodologies developed for the study of genome scale models of cellular metabolism. In particular, we use metabolic flux constraint-based models to exhaustively search for artificial chemistry pathways that can optimally perform an array of elementary metabolic functions. Despite the simplicity of the model employed, we find that the ensuing pathways display a surprisingly rich set of properties, including the existence of autocatalytic cycles and hierarchical modules, the appearance of universally preferable metabolites and reactions, and a logarithmic trend of pathway length as a function of input/output molecule size. Some of these properties can be derived analytically, borrowing methods previously used in cryptography. In addition, by mapping biochemical networks onto a simplified carbon atom reaction backbone, we find that several of the properties predicted by the artificial chemistry model hold for real metabolic networks. These findings suggest that optimality principles and arithmetic simplicity might lie beneath some aspects of biochemical complexity

Network model of immune responses reveals key effectors to single and co-infection dynamics by a respiratory bacterium and a gastrointestinal helminth

Co-infections alter the host immune response but how the systemic and local processes at the site of infection interact is still unclear. The majority of studies on co-infections concentrate on one of the infecting species, an immune function or group of cells and often focus on the initial phase of the infection. Here, we used a combination of experiments and mathematical modelling to investigate the network of immune responses against single and co-infections with the respiratory bacterium Bordetella bronchiseptica and the gastrointestinal helminth Trichostrongylus retortaeformis. Our goal was to identify representative mediators and functions that could capture the essence of the host immune response as a whole, and to assess how their relative contribution dynamically changed over time and between single and co-infected individuals. Network-based discrete dynamic models of single infections were built using current knowledge of bacterial and helminth immunology; the two single infection models were combined into a co-infection model that was then verified by our empirical findings. Simulations showed that a T helper cell mediated antibody and neutrophil response led to phagocytosis and clearance of B. bronchiseptica from the lungs. This was consistent in single and co-infection with no significant delay induced by the helminth. In contrast, T. retortaeformis intensity decreased faster when co-infected with the bacterium. Simulations suggested that the robust recruitment of neutrophils in the co-infection, added to the activation of IgG and eosinophil driven reduction of larvae, which also played an important role in single infection, contributed to this fast clearance. Perturbation analysis of the models, through the knockout of individual nodes (immune cells), identified the cells critical to parasite persistence and clearance both in single and co-infections. Our integrated approach captured the within-host immuno-dynamics of bacteria-helminth infection and identified key components that can be crucial for explaining individual variability between single and co-infections in natural populations

Blockade of insulin-like growth factors increases efficacy of paclitaxel in metastatic breast cancer.

Breast cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in women owing to metastasis and the development of resistance to established therapies. Macrophages are the most abundant immune cells in the breast tumor microenvironment and can both inhibit and support cancer progression. Thus, gaining a better understanding of how macrophages support cancer could lead to the development of more effective therapies. In this study, we find that breast cancer-associated macrophages express high levels of insulin-like growth factors 1 and 2 (IGFs) and are the main source of IGFs within both primary and metastatic tumors. In total, 75% of breast cancer patients show activation of insulin/IGF-1 receptor signaling and this correlates with increased macrophage infiltration and advanced tumor stage. In patients with invasive breast cancer, activation of Insulin/IGF-1 receptors increased to 87%. Blocking IGF in combination with paclitaxel, a chemotherapeutic agent commonly used to treat breast cancer, showed a significant reduction in tumor cell proliferation and lung metastasis in pre-clinical breast cancer models compared to paclitaxel monotherapy. Our findings provide the rationale for further developing the combination of paclitaxel with IGF blockers for the treatment of invasive breast cancer, and Insulin/IGF1R activation and IGF+ stroma cells as potential biomarker candidates for further evaluation