Congenital prepubic sinus: A case report and review of the literature

AbstractCongenital prepubic sinus (CPS) is an extremely rare anomaly, which is often associated with purulent discharge from a midline opening overlying the pubis. CPS was first described by Campbell et al. in 1987 and they suggested that it might represent a variation in normal embryological development. Several theories have been proposed regarding the pathogenesis of CPS. However, the etiology of CPS is still unclear because the anatomical and pathological features of CPS often differ from each other. We report a case of CPS and review the literature to improve the global understanding of CPS

Assessment of preoperative exercise capacity in hepatocellular carcinoma patients with chronic liver injury undergoing hepatectomy

BACKGROUND: Cardiopulmonary exercise testing measures oxygen uptake at increasing levels of work and predicts cardiopulmonary performance under conditions of stress, such as after abdominal surgery. Dynamic assessment of preoperative exercise capacity may be a useful predictor of postoperative prognosis. This study examined the relationship between preoperative exercise capacity and event-free survival in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with chronic liver injury who underwent hepatectomy. METHODS: Sixty-one HCC patients underwent preoperative cardiopulmonary exercise testing to determine their anaerobic threshold (AT). The AT was defined as the break point between carbon dioxide production and oxygen consumption per unit of time (VO(2)). Postoperative events including recurrence of HCC, death, liver failure, and complications of cirrhosis were recorded. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate associations between 35 clinical factors and outcomes, and identify independent prognostic indicators of event-free survival and maintenance of Child-Pugh class. RESULTS: Multivariate analyses identified preoperative branched-chain amino acid/tyrosine ratio (BTR) <5, alanine aminotransferase level ≥42 IU/l, and AT VO(2) <11.5 ml/min/kg as independent prognostic indicators of event-free survival. AT VO(2) <11.5 ml/min/kg and BTR <5 were identified as independent prognostic indicators of maintenance of Child-Pugh class. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified preoperative exercise capacity as an independent prognostic indicator of event-free survival and maintenance of Child-Pugh class in HCC patients with chronic liver injury undergoing hepatectomy

A novel biomarker TERTmRNA is applicable for early detection of hepatoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Backgrounds</p> <p>We previously reported a highly sensitive method for serum human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) mRNA for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). α-fetoprotein (AFP) and des-γ-carboxy prothrombin (DCP) are good markers for HCC. In this study, we verified the significance of hTERTmRNA in a large scale multi-centered trial, collating quantified values with clinical course.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In 638 subjects including 303 patients with HCC, 89 with chronic hepatitis (CH), 45 with liver cirrhosis (LC) and 201 healthy individuals, we quantified serum hTERTmRNA using the real-time RT-PCR. We examined its sensitivity and specificity in HCC diagnosis, clinical significance, ROC curve analysis in comparison with other tumor markers, and its correlations with the clinical parameters using Pearson relative test and multivariate analyses. Furthermore, we performed a prospective and comparative study to observe the change of biomarkers, including hTERTmRNA in HCC patients receiving anti-cancer therapies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>hTERTmRNA was demonstrated to be independently correlated with clinical parameters; tumor size and tumor differentiation (P < 0.001, each). The sensitivity/specificity of hTERTmRNA in HCC diagnosis showed 90.2%/85.4% for hTERT. hTERTmRNA proved to be superior to AFP, AFP-L3, and DCP in the diagnosis and underwent an indisputable change in response to therapy. The detection rate of small HCC by hTERTmRNA was superior to the other markers.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>hTERTmRNA is superior to conventional tumor markers in the diagnosis and recurrence of HCC at an early stage.</p

Image Processing Methods Applied to Landmine Detection in Ground Penetrating Radar

<p>Recent advances in statistically based ground penetrating radar (GPR) landmine detection have utilized 2-D slices of data to recognize the hyperbolic shapes caused by a sub-surface landmine. The objective in this research is to identify these shapes using methodology found in the field of image processing. Three different recognition methods were considered; (1) instance matching, which aims to recognize occurrences of a specific object; (2) object detection, which aims to find objects belonging to a class of objects; and (3) category recognition, which aims to categorize entire images based upon the contents of each image. This research consists of the adaptation and evaluation of these methods applied to GPR landmine detection. The results from this work illustrate the additional information that these methods provide to the GPR detection system. In addition, this work shows promise for the application of additional methods from the image processing and computer vision fields.</p>Thesi

Heterotopic pancreas causing jejunal obstruction in a neonate

Heterotopic pancreas (HP) is a rare entity. HP is rarely diagnosed during the neonatal period, and only a few neonatal cases of HP causing gastrointestinal obstruction have been reported. We herein describe a rare case of HP causing jejunal obstruction in the early neonatal period and discuss the association of an inflammatory process in this case. Keywords: Heterotopic pancreas, Neonate, Gastrointestinal obstruction, Jejunu

Absence of the interstitial cells of Cajal in a neonate with segmental dilatation of ileum

Segmental dilatation of intestine (SD) is a congenital disease characterized by localized bowel dilation with normal ganglion cells. Clinically, small intestinal type of SD frequently occurs in the neonatal period with pseudo-obstruction. Though many theories have been proposed regarding the pathogenesis, the disease etiology is unclear. Interstitial cells of Cajal (ICCs) have been ascribed as the pacemaker cells that coordinate peristaltic behavior and its disorder is the possible cause of intestinal pseudo-obstruction. Here, we report a rare case of SD observed the absence of ICCs in the dilated segment. A male neonate suffered abdominal distention and vomiting underwent segmental resection of the dilated ileum on the third day after birth. He was diagnosed with SD and his clinical course after surgery was uneventful. Immunohistochemically, c-kit positive cell was not identified around the ganglion cells in the resected specimen