Delayed rupture of a pseudoaneurysm in the brachial artery of a burn reconstruction patient

A brachial artery pseudoaneurysm is a rare but serious condition that can be limb threatening. A number of reports have found that it may be the result of damage to the blood vessels around the brachial artery, either directly or indirectly, due to trauma or systemic diseases. We present our experience of delayed pseudoaneurysm rupture of the brachial artery in a rehabilitation patient with burns of the upper extremity who underwent fasciotomy and musculocutaneous flap coverage. We also provide a review of the brachial artery pseudoaneurysm

Contralateral Abdominal Pocketing in Salvation of Replanted Fingertips with Compromised Circulation

Abdominal pocketing is one of the most useful methods in salvation of compromised replanted fingertips. Abdominal pocketing has generally been performed in the ipsilateral lower abdominal quadrant, but we have also performed contralateral pocketing at our institute. To determine which approach is more beneficial, a total of 40 patients underwent an abdominal pocketing procedure in either the ipsilateral or contralateral lower abdominal quadrant after fingertip replantation. Dates of abdominal pocketing after initial replantation, detachment after abdominal pocketing, range of motion (ROM) before abdominal pocketing, and sequential ROM after the detachment operation and date of full ROM recovery and Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder, and Hand questionnaire (DASH) score were recorded through medical chart review. Mean detachment date, mean abduction of shoulder after the detachment operation, and mean days to return to full ROM were not significantly different between the ipsilateral and contralateral pocketing groups. However, the mean DASH score was significantly lower in the contralateral group than the ipsilateral group. There were also fewer postoperative wound complications in the contralateral group than in the ipsilateral group. We, therefore, recommend contralateral abdominal pocketing rather than ipsilateral abdominal pocketing to increase patient comfort and reduce pain and complications

Symmetric Lipofibromatous Hamartoma Affecting Digital Nerves

Lipofibromatous hamartoma of the nerve is a benign tumor, which affects the major nerves and their branches in the human body. It is often found in the median nerve of the hand and is commonly associated with macrodactyly, but it is rarely found in the digital nerves at the peripheral level. This tumor is often found in young adults and may go through a self-limiting course. However, operation is indicated when the tumor size is large or when the associated nerve compressive symptoms are present. We have experienced a rare case of lipofibromatous hamartoma that symmetrically involved the volar digital nerves of both index fingers on the ulnar side. With the aid of a microscope, we dissected and removed the tumor as much as possible without sacrificing the nerve. No sensory change occurred in both fingers and no sign of recurrence was observed upon follow-up

Standardization of Terminology in Laboratory Medicine II

Standardization of medical terminology is essential in data transmission between health care institutes and in maximizing the benefits of information technology. The purpose of this study was to standardize medical terms for laboratory observations. During the second year of the study, a standard database of concept names for laboratory terms that covered those used in tertiary health care institutes and reference laboratories was developed. The laboratory terms in the Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC) database were adopted and matched with the electronic data interchange (EDI) codes in Korea. A public hearing and a workshop for clinical pathologists were held to collect the opinions of experts. The Korean standard laboratory terminology database containing six axial concept names, components, property, time aspect, system (specimen), scale type, and method type, was established for 29,340 test observations. Short names and mapping tables for EDI codes and UMLS were added. Synonym tables were prepared to help match concept names to common terms used in the fields. We herein described the Korean standard laboratory terminology database for test names, result description terms, and result units encompassing most of the laboratory tests in Korea

Discovery of Q203, a potent clinical candidate for the treatment of tuberculosis

New therapeutic strategies are needed to combat the tuberculosis pandemic and the spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) forms of the disease, which remain a serious public health challenge worldwide1, 2. The most urgent clinical need is to discover potent agents capable of reducing the duration of MDR and XDR tuberculosis therapy with a success rate comparable to that of current therapies for drug-susceptible tuberculosis. The last decade has seen the discovery of new agent classes for the management of tuberculosis3, 4, 5, several of which are currently in clinical trials6, 7, 8. However, given the high attrition rate of drug candidates during clinical development and the emergence of drug resistance, the discovery of additional clinical candidates is clearly needed. Here, we report on a promising class of imidazopyridine amide (IPA) compounds that block Mycobacterium tuberculosis growth by targeting the respiratory cytochrome bc1 complex. The optimized IPA compound Q203 inhibited the growth of MDR and XDR M. tuberculosis clinical isolates in culture broth medium in the low nanomolar range and was efficacious in a mouse model of tuberculosis at a dose less than 1 mg per kg body weight, which highlights the potency of this compound. In addition, Q203 displays pharmacokinetic and safety profiles compatible with once-daily dosing. Together, our data indicate that Q203 is a promising new clinical candidate for the treatment of tuberculosis

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

FCC-ee: The Lepton Collider: Future Circular Collider Conceptual Design Report Volume 2

In response to the 2013 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, the Future Circular Collider (FCC) study was launched, as an international collaboration hosted by CERN. This study covers a highest-luminosity high-energy lepton collider (FCC-ee) and an energy-frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh), which could, successively, be installed in the same 100 km tunnel. The scientific capabilities of the integrated FCC programme would serve the worldwide community throughout the 21st century. The FCC study also investigates an LHC energy upgrade, using FCC-hh technology. This document constitutes the second volume of the FCC Conceptual Design Report, devoted to the electron-positron collider FCC-ee. After summarizing the physics discovery opportunities, it presents the accelerator design, performance reach, a staged operation scenario, the underlying technologies, civil engineering, technical infrastructure, and an implementation plan. FCC-ee can be built with today’s technology. Most of the FCC-ee infrastructure could be reused for FCC-hh. Combining concepts from past and present lepton colliders and adding a few novel elements, the FCC-ee design promises outstandingly high luminosity. This will make the FCC-ee a unique precision instrument to study the heaviest known particles (Z, W and H bosons and the top quark), offering great direct and indirect sensitivity to new physics

HE-LHC: The High-Energy Large Hadron Collider: Future Circular Collider Conceptual Design Report Volume 4

In response to the 2013 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics (EPPSU), the Future Circular Collider (FCC) study was launched as a world-wide international collaboration hosted by CERN. The FCC study covered an energy-frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh), a highest-luminosity high-energy lepton collider (FCC-ee), the corresponding 100 km tunnel infrastructure, as well as the physics opportunities of these two colliders, and a high-energy LHC, based on FCC-hh technology. This document constitutes the third volume of the FCC Conceptual Design Report, devoted to the hadron collider FCC-hh. It summarizes the FCC-hh physics discovery opportunities, presents the FCC-hh accelerator design, performance reach, and staged operation plan, discusses the underlying technologies, the civil engineering and technical infrastructure, and also sketches a possible implementation. Combining ingredients from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the high-luminosity LHC upgrade and adding novel technologies and approaches, the FCC-hh design aims at significantly extending the energy frontier to 100 TeV. Its unprecedented centre-of-mass collision energy will make the FCC-hh a unique instrument to explore physics beyond the Standard Model, offering great direct sensitivity to new physics and discoveries