The efficiency of vancomycin powder and rifampicin for deep surgical site infections in spinal instrumentation surgery

Objective: Infection after spinal surgery always increases the hospital stay in the clinic and can cause serious patient morbidity. This study aimed to show the difference between sprinkling vancomycin powder and washing with rifampicin during debridement surgery in deep infections seen after spinal instrumentation surgeries. Material and methods: This present study was conducted on 179 cases of infection after spinal instrumentation surgeries. The patients were divided into three groups: those receiving topical vancomycin, rifampicin irrigation, and only normal saline irrigation. The preoperative and postoperative CRP levels, hospitalization time, operation length, bone involvement, second operation for infection, impact removal surgeries, and mortality rates have been examined. Results: The CRP decrease on the 5th day was faster in the rifampicin group (p<0.001). On the 30th day, vancomycin and rifampicin decreased CRP values and had a similar effect on hospitalization time but were more effective than the normal saline group (p<0.001). In patients with bone involvement, the rifampicin group was superior to vancomycin and reduced implant removal surgery (p<0.001). Conclusions: Vancomycin powder and rifampicin application during debridement in deep spinal surgical site infections can reduce hospital stays and prevent secondary surgeries. In addition, rifampicin can be effective in infections with bone involvement

uC: Ubiquitous Collaboration Platform for Multimodal Team Interaction Support

A human-centered computing platform that improves teamwork and transforms the “human- computer interaction experience” for distributed teams is presented. This Ubiquitous Collaboration, or uC (“you see”), platform\u27s objective is to transform distributed teamwork (i.e., work occurring when teams of workers and learners are geographically dispersed and often interacting at different times). It achieves this goal through a multimodal team interaction interface realized through a reconfigurable open architecture. The approach taken is to integrate: (1) an intuitive speech- and video-centric multi-modal interface to augment more conventional methods (e.g., mouse, stylus and touch), (2) an open and reconfigurable architecture supporting information gathering, and (3) a machine intelligent approach to analysis and management of heterogeneous live and stored sensor data to support collaboration. The system will transform how teams of people interact with computers by drawing on both the virtual and physical environment

Application Of Affine-Invariant Fourier Descriptors To Lipreading For Audio-Visual Speech Recognition

This work focuses on a novel affine-invariant lipreading method, and its optimal combination with an audio subsystem to implement an audio-visual automatic speech recognition (AV-ASR) system. The lipreading method is based on outer lip contour description which is transformed to the Fourier domain and normalized there to eliminate dependencies on the affine transformation (translation, rotation, scaling, and shear) and on the starting point

Results of external fixator treatment in distal radius intra-articular fractures

Objectives: Assessing the outcomes of treatment of the radius distal end joint fractures by using the closed reduction external fixation method. Methods: 41 intra-articular distal radius fractures of 38 patients treated in the Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology in the Medical Faculty of Trakya University between September 1997 and December 2004 were retrospectively examined. All of the fractures were treated by using closed reduction and uniplanar radiocarpal external wrist fixator. The affected limbs were assessed functionally and radiologically during the follow-up period. Results: Mean duration of external fixation application was 7.3 weeks. Mean follow-up time was 41.6 months. From the functional aspect, very good outcomes were obtained in 10 cases, good outcomes in 14 cases, medium outcomes in 15 cases, and bad outcomes in 2 cases. In radiologic scoring, very good outcomes were reported in 3 cases, good outcomes in 28 cases, medium outcomes in 8 cases, and bad outcomes in 2 cases. In total, 22 complications were observed. Reflex sympathetic dystrophy was observed in 15 cases, pain in the distal radioulnar joint in 8 cases, pain in distal radioulnar joint, and eburnation in 4 cases. In some cases, multiple complications were observed. There were also cases with early-stage sensation disorder and nail tip sensitivity. However, the complaints ended after the removal of the fixator. Conclusion: In intra-articular distal radius fractures, successful outcomes might be achieved by treating with external fixation without opening the fracture line

Moving-Talker, Speaker-Independent Feature Study, and Baseline Results Using the CUAVE Multimodal Speech Corpus

<p/> <p>Strides in computer technology and the search for deeper, more powerful techniques in signal processing have brought multimodal research to the forefront in recent years. Audio-visual speech processing has become an important part of this research because it holds great potential for overcoming certain problems of traditional audio-only methods. Difficulties, due to background noise and multiple speakers in an application environment, are significantly reduced by the additional information provided by visual features. This paper presents information on a new audio-visual database, a feature study on moving speakers, and on baseline results for the whole speaker group. Although a few databases have been collected in this area, none has emerged as a standard for comparison. Also, efforts to date have often been limited, focusing on cropped video or stationary speakers. This paper seeks to introduce a challenging audio-visual database that is flexible and fairly comprehensive, yet easily available to researchers on one DVD. The Clemson University Audio-Visual Experiments (CUAVE) database is a speaker-independent corpus of both connected and continuous digit strings totaling over 7000 utterances. It contains a wide variety of speakers and is designed to meet several goals discussed in this paper. One of these goals is to allow testing of adverse conditions such as moving talkers and speaker pairs. A feature study of connected digit strings is also discussed. It compares stationary and moving talkers in a speaker-independent grouping. An image-processing-based contour technique, an image transform method, and a deformable template scheme are used in this comparison to obtain visual features. This paper also presents methods and results in an attempt to make these techniques more robust to speaker movement. Finally, initial baseline speaker-independent results are included using all speakers, and conclusions as well as suggested areas of research are given.</p

Migration of a Broken Kirschner Wire after Surgical Treatment of Acromioclavicular Joint Dislocation

Kirschner wire (K-wire) is one of the commonly used implants in orthopaedics practice. Migration of the wire is one of the most frequently reported complications after fixation by the K-wire. In particular, it has been reported that a greater range of motion in the shoulder, negative intrathoracic pressure associated with respiration, gravitational force, and muscular activities may cause migration from the upper extremities. In general, thin and long foreign bodies with smooth surfaces that are localized within the tendon sheath and at an upper extremity can migrate more readily and can reach longer distances. Here, we present a patient with long-term migration of a broken K-wire who underwent fixation for acromioclavicular joint dislocation 5 years ago