Surgical outcomes of strabismus after iatrogenic ophthalmic artery occlusion caused by cosmetic filler injections

Background To investigate the surgical outcomes of strabismus related to iatrogenic occlusion of the ophthalmic artery and its branches from cosmetic facial filler injection. Methods A retrospective study was performed on 6 patients who underwent strabismus surgery among 23 patients who had suffered occlusion of the ophthalmic artery and its branches after cosmetic facial filler injection. Initial, preoperative and final ocular motility examinations, the type of surgery and surgical outcomes were evaluated. Results At initial presentation, visual acuity was no light perception in 5 patients and hand motion in one patient. Five out of 6 patients showed initial ophthalmoplegia. Among these 5 patients, eye motility fully recovered in 3 patients although sensory strabismus developed during follow-up, while the remaining 2 patients had persistent ocular motility limitations. Strabismus surgery was performed at 2.2 ± 1.5 years after iatrogenic ophthalmic artery occlusion. Preoperatively, 5 of the 6 patients showed exotropia, and one patient had esotropia. Vertical deviation was found in 3 out of 6 patients in addition to the horizontal deviation. Successful outcome was achieved only in the 4 patients without persistent ophthalmoplegia after 1.4 ± 1.0 years from surgery. The other two patients with persistent ocular motility limitations failed to achieve successful alignment after surgery, and one patient eventually underwent evisceration due to phthisis bulbi. Conclusions In our study, surgical outcomes of strabismus caused by cosmetic facial filler injection were successful only in patients without persistent ophthalmoplegia at the time of surgery.This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No.2017R1A2B4011450). The funding organization had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Channel-Aware Congestion Control in Vehicular Cyber-Physical Systems

In vehicular cyber-physical systems, cars are connected to create a mobile network called a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) to perform various functions, including improved awareness of the surrounding environment. Moving vehicles continually broadcast beacon signals containing information such as position, heading, acceleration, steering angle, vehicle size, and accident notification. However, channel congestion in dense traffic conditions adversely affects network performance. To resolve congestion in VANETs, several works in the literature have studied congestion control. However, they have considered packet loss only as an indication of channel congestion regardless of channel condition. In this paper, we present a channel-aware congestion control algorithm (CACC) that controls the transmission power and data rate. We take into account the received signal strength (RSS) when diagnosing packet loss to determine channel conditions, such as severe fading or channel congestion. In the case of severe fading, we decrease the data rate for a more robust modulation and coding scheme. Additionally, we adjust the transmission power to maintain a desirable packet error rate. Our simulation results show that CACC significantly outperforms other distributed congestion control algorithms by reducing the packet loss rate and increasing the packet delivery ratio.1

Cooperative Spatial Retreat for Resilient Drone Networks

Drones are broadening their scope to various applications such as networking, package delivery, agriculture, rescue, and many more. For proper operation of drones, reliable communication should be guaranteed because drones are remotely controlled. When drones experience communication failure due to bad channel condition, interference, or jamming in a certain area, one existing solution is to exploit mobility or so-called spatial retreat to evacuate them from the communication failure area. However, the conventional spatial retreat scheme moves drones in random directions, which results in inefficient movement with significant evacuation time and waste of battery lifetime. In this paper, we propose a novel spatial retreat technique that takes advantage of cooperation between drones for resilient networking, which is called cooperative spatial retreat (CSR). Our performance evaluation shows that the proposed CSR significantly outperforms existing schemes. © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.1

A Surgically Treated Case of Chronic Necrotizing Aspergillosis with Pleural Invasion

Aspergillus is a ubiquitous fungus and can cause many levels of disease severity. Chronic necrotizing aspergillosis is a rare disease and few cases have been reported in Korea. We experienced a case of pleural aspergillosis that was treated successfully with medical and surgical interventions. The 52-year-old man who was diagnosed with chronic necrotizing pulmonary aspergillosis underwent surgical treatment including a lobectomy, decortication, and myoplasty. The patient was also medically treated with amphotericin B followed by voriconazole. Pleural irrigation with amphotericin B was also performed. A multi-dimensional approach should be considered for treating chronic necrotizing pulmonary aspergillosis

Fluid-filled Giant Bulla Treated with Percutaneous Drainage and Talc Sclerotherapy: A Modified Brompton Technique

A 75-year-old man who was diagnosed as having a fluid-filled giant bulla was treated with a modified Brompton technique due to his poor performance status. Percutaneous drainage, suction, and talc sclerotherapy through a Foley catheter can be good treatment options for patients with conditions that are too poor to allow surgical intervention, especially if there is adhesion between a giant bulla and parietal pleura. Talc can also be used safely when mixed with normal saline as a sclerosant

A Robot Operating System Framework for Secure UAV Communications

To perform advanced operations with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), it is crucial that components other than the existing ones such as flight controller, network devices, and ground control station (GCS) are also used. The inevitable addition of hardware and software to accomplish UAV operations may lead to security vulnerabilities through various vectors. Hence, we propose a security framework in this study to improve the security of an unmanned aerial system (UAS). The proposed framework operates in the robot operating system (ROS) and is designed to focus on sev-eral perspectives, such as overhead arising from additional security elements and security issues essential for flight missions. The UAS is operated in a nonnative and native ROS environment. The performance of the proposed framework in both environments is verified through experiments. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.1

Curcumin induces expression of 15-hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase in gastric mucosal cells and mouse stomach in vivo: AP-1 as a potential target

15-Hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase (15-PGDH) catalyzes the conversion of oncogenic prostaglandin E-2 to non-tumerigenic 15-keto prostaglandin E-2. In the present study, we found that curcumin, a yellow coloring agent present in the rhizome of Curcuma Tonga Linn (Zingiberaceae), induced expression of 15-PGDH at the both transcriptional and translational levels in normal rat gastric mucosal cells. By using deletion constructs of 15-PGDH promoter, we were able to demonstrate that activator protein-1 (AP-1) is the principal transcription factor responsible for regulating curcumin-induced 15-PGDH expression. Curcumin enhanced the expression of c-jun and cFos that are functional subunits of AP-1, in the nuclear fraction of cells. Silencing of c-jun suppressed curcumin-induced expression of 15-PGDH. Moreover, the chromatin immunoprecipitation assay revealed curcumin-induced binding of c-Jun to the AP-1 consensus sequence present in the 15-PGDH promoter. Curaimin increased phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and JNK. and pharmacologic inhibition of these kinases abrogated the curcumin-induced phosphorylation of clun and 15-PGDH expression. In contrast, tetrahydrocurcumin which lacks the alpha,beta-unsaturated carbonyl group failed to induce 15-PGDH expression, suggesting that the electrophilic carbonyl group of curcumin is essential for its induction of 15-PGDH expression. Curcumin restored the expression of 15-PGDH which is down-regulated by Helicobater pylori through suppression of DNA methyltransferase 1. In addition, oral administration of curcumin increased the expression of 15-PGDH and its regulators such as p-ERK1/2, p-JNK and c-Jun in the mouse stomach. Taken together, these findings suggest that curcumin-induced upregulation of 15-PGDH may contribute to chemopreventive effects of this phytochemical on inflammation-associated gastric carcinogenesis. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Inhaled corticosteroid use and risks of lung cancer and laryngeal cancer

SummaryBackgroundChronic inflammation has been implicated in the pathogenesis of several cancers, including lung and laryngeal cancer. The objective of the study is to elucidate the association between ICS use and diagnosis of lung and laryngeal cancer.MethodsA nested case–control study based on the Korean national claims database included new adult users of inhaled medications between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2010. Patients diagnosed with lung cancer or laryngeal cancer after enrollment were identified as cases and up to five control individuals matched for age, sex, diagnosis of asthma or COPD, Charlson Comorbidity Index scores, number of health care visits, and initiation date were selected.ResultsFrom the 792,687 eligible cohort, 9177 individuals diagnosed with lung cancer were matched with 37,048 controls. Additionally, 408 laryngeal cancer patients and 1651 controls were matched. ICS use was associated with a decreased rate of lung cancer diagnosis [adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 0.79; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.69–0.90]. The inverse association between ICS use and lung cancer risk was dose dependent (P < 0.0001 for the trend). However, no reduction in the risk of laryngeal cancer among ICS users was identified (aOR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.62–1.18).ConclusionThe use of ICS is associated with a reduced risk of lung cancer but not of laryngeal cancer