Clinical Features and Prognosis of HLA-B27 Positive and Negative Anterior Uveitis in a Korean Population

Clinical features and prognosis of HLA-B27 positive anterior uveitis (AU) were assessed compared with HLA-B27 negative AU in a Korean population, based on the medical records of AU patients seen at a university hospital. Twenty-seven HLA-B27 negative, idiopathic AU patients (group I) and 55 HLA-B27 positive AU patients (group II) were studied. HLA-B27 positive group was further divided into 29 with associated systemic disease (seronegative spondyloarthropathy) (group IIA) and 26 without associated systemic disease (group IIB). Significantly more severe anterior chamber inflammation in terms of anterior chamber cells (P=0.006) and hypopyon formation (P=0.034) was observed with higher frequency of AU attacks (P=0.007) in the HLA-B27 positive group than in the HLA-B27 negative group. Systemic/periocular steroids were required in significantly more patients in the HLA-B27 positive group than in the HLA-B27 negative group (P=0.015). However, no significant differences were observed for final ocular and visual outcomes between these two groups. Associated systemic disease made no significant difference in the clinical features and prognosis in the HLA-B27 positive AU patients. In conclusion, despite more severe inflammation and a higher recurrence rate, HLA-B27 positive AU shows similar good final ocular and visual outcomes compared to HLA-B27 negative, idiopathic AU in a Korean population

Anesthetic management of the emergency laparotomy for a patient with multiple sclerosis -A case report-

A 33-year-old male patient with multiple sclerosis (MS) received an emergency laparotomy because of perforated appendicitis. He had been suffering from MS for 2 years and the symptoms of MS were paraplegia and urinary incontinence. Anesthesia was induced with propofol and remifentanil and maintained with nitrous oxide, sevoflurane and remifentanil. Rocuronium was used for tracheal intubation. Train of four ratio and bispectral index scale were also monitored for adequate muscle relaxation and anesthetic depth. The patient emerged from general anesthesia smoothly and was extubated without any complication. Postoperative exacerbation of MS symptoms did not appear. However, he was rehospitalized because deep vein thrombosis (DVT) occurred after discharge and he received heparinization immediately. Eventually, he was discharged after a full recovery from DVT. We report a safe anesthetic management of the patient with MS, with the use of sevoflurane and with no the aggravation of MS during postoperative period

Role of spinon and spinon singlet pair excitations on phase transitions in d−waved-wave superconductors

We examine the roles of massless Dirac spinon and spin singlet pair excitations on the phase transition in $d-wave$ superconductors. Although the massless spinon excitations in the presence of the spin singlet pair excitations do not alter the nature of the phase transition at $T = 0$, that is, the XY universality class, they are seen to induce an additional attractive interaction potential between vortices, further stabilizing vortex-antivortex pairs at low temperature for lightly doped high $T_c$ samples.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Percutaneous Coronary Intervention versus Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting for Diabetics with Multivessel Coronary Artery Disease: The Korean Multicenter Revascularization Registry (KORR)

This study was designed to assess the relative merits of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in multivessel coronary artery disease (MVCAD), particularly for Korean diabetics. Among 3,279 patients with MVCAD who were recommended for revascularization were enrolled from nine centers in Korea, 2,154 were selected after statistical adjustments for the disparities between two groups. Survival rates were not significantly different for three years between two groups. Among diabetic patients, the three-year mortality rate in PCI group was 1.9-fold higher than that of CABG group, although it was not statistically significant (PCI 19.8%, CABG 11.4%, p=0.14). The three-year mortality rate was similar between the two groups in non-diabetics (PCI 8.3%, CABG 10.0%, p=0.50). The 30-day rate of cerebrovascular event was higher in CABG group, for both diabetic (CABG 3.6%, PCI 0.0%, p<0.001) and non-diabetic patients (CABG 2.4%, PCI 0.0%, p<0.001). Short- and long-term revascularization rates were higher in PCI group than in CABG group. As a conclusion, this Korean registry demonstrates that PCI was associated with comparable survival rates and lower short-term morbidity, but a greater requirement for repeated revascularization compared with CABG in Korean diabetics

Electrochemical Characterization of Clean Shape-Controlled Pt Nanoparticles Prepared in Presence of Oleylamine/Oleic Acid

A collection of shape-controlled Pt nanoparticles has been prepared using two different and previously described methodologies, both using oleylamine/oleic acid as capping material/solvent. A new decontamination protocol is presented to effectively clean the surface of the different nanoparticles thus allowing a full exposure of their surface area and consequently to make the most of their surface structure dependent reactivity. Subsequently, the clean shape-controlled Pt nanoparticles have been electrochemically characterized and their electrocatalytic properties evaluated towards some surface structure reactions of interest. The results indicate that the full characterization of the surface structure cannot be done exclusively by the available microscopy techniques, since it is very difficult to determine the presence of surface defects. Additional surface characterization probes, such as those provided by electrochemical surface sensitive reactions, have been used to assess the surface structure of the samples.This work has been financially supported by the MICINN (Feder) of Spain and Generalitat Valencia through Projects CTQ2013-44083-P and PROMETEOII/2014/013, respectively