Traumatic Tympanic Bulla Fracture in a Cat With Severe Head Trauma

A nine-year-old male European shorthair cat was referred to our practice with severe head trauma after suffering a road traffic accident (RTA). The patient presented marked facial swelling and multiple skin wounds and bruising, inspiratory dyspnea, palpable mandibular and maxillary fractures, serosanguinolent oronasal discharge and right eye exophthalmos and buphthalmos with loss of menace and pupillary reflex. After stabilizing the patient, a CT scan was performed under general anesthesia and an oesophagostomy tube was placed. The scan revealed the presence of multiple right tympanic bulla fractures. Multiple mandibular, maxillary, and palatine fractures were also present. The cat underwent surgery. Mandibular symphyseal separation and maxillary fractures were stabilized using intraoral cerclage wire fixation reinforced with composite and the right eye was enucleated. The rest of the fractures were treated conservatively. A CT scan 4 months after the trauma was also performed. At this point, the maxillofacial fractures were healing properly, and a bone callus demonstrating fusion of fragments of the right tympanic bulla was evident. There was absence of abnormal content inside the right tympanic bulla. The patient recovered uneventfully with no neurological deficits. To the author''s knowledge this is the first case reporting a traumatic tympanic bulla fracture in the cat with case follow up, and the first case reported using CT as diagnostic imaging test

The Dunkl–Williams constant, convexity, smoothness and normal structure

AbstractIn this paper we exhibit some connections between the Dunkl–Williams constant and some other well-known constants and notions. We establish bounds for the Dunkl–Williams constant that explain and quantify a characterization of uniformly nonsquare Banach spaces in terms of the Dunkl–Williams constant given by M. Baronti and P.L. Papini. We also study the relationship between Dunkl–Williams constant, the fixed point property for nonexpansive mappings and normal structure

Sexuality of Female Spina Bifida Patients : Predictors of a Satisfactory Sexual Function

Objective To assess the sexual function of women with spina bifida (SB), and to verify the factors that influence their sexual function. Methods A cross-sectional study in which a validated female-specific questionnaire was applied to 140 SB female patients from four different cities (Porto Alegre, Brazil; and Barcelona, Madrid, and Málaga, Spain) between 2019 and 2020. The questionnaires collected data on the clinical characteristics of SB, and female sexual function was assessed using the 6-item version of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI-6) validated to Portuguese and Spanish. Results Half of the patients had had sexual activity at least once in the life, but most (57.1%) did not use any contraception method. Sexual dysfunction was present in most (84.3%) patients, and all sexual function domains were impaired compared those of non-neurogenic women. The presence of urinary and fecal incontinence significantly affected the quality of their sexual activity based on the FSFI-6. Conclusion The specific clinical aspects of the SB patients, such as urinary and fecal incontinence, should be properly addressed by their doctors, since they are associated with reduced sexual activity and lower FSFI-6 scores in the overall or specific domains. There is also a need to improve gynecological care among sexually-active SB patients, since most do not use any contraceptive methods and are at risk of inadvertent pregnancy

Intense Physical Exercise Reduces Overt Attentional Capture

The abrupt onset of a visual stimulus typically results in overt attentional capture, which can be quantified by saccadic eye movements. Here, we tested whether attentional capture following onset of task-irrelevant visual stimuli (new object) is reduced after a bout of intense physical exercise. A group of participants performed a visual search task in two different activity conditions: Rest - without any prior effort; Effort - immediately after an acute bout of intense exercise. The results showed that participants exhibited: 1) slower reaction time of the first saccade toward the target when a new object was simultaneously presented in the visual field, but only in the rest activity condition; 2) more saccades to the new object in the rest activity condition than in the effort activity condition. We suggest that immediately after an acute bout of effort, participants improved their ability to inhibit irrelevant (distracting) stimuli. Key words: Acute exercise, effort, eye movements, attention, exogenous attention, physical activity