Liver Trauma Management

Liver trauma is responsible for the majority of penetrating abdominal trauma and is the third most common injury caused by firearms. Presenting a 20% mortality rate, it is an organ with wide and complex vascularization, receiving blood from the hepatic veins and portal vein, as well as from the hepatic arteries. The diagnosis is not always simple in polytrauma patients and contains a wide range of exams such as computerized tomography and diagnostic peritoneal lavage. Treatment depends mostly on a few factors such as the patient’s hemodynamic stability, the degree of injury according to the AAST classification, the resources available, and the surgeon’s expertise. Considering these factors, minor lesions can be treated mostly with a conservative approach in hemodynamically stable patients. Embolization by arteriography has shown good results in major lesions in clinically stable patients as well. On the other hand, more complex lesions associated with hemodynamically unstable patients may indicate damage control surgery applying techniques such as temporary liver packing and clamping the pedicle to restore the hemodynamic status. This chapter aims to describe those techniques and their indications in liver trauma

Database model and specification of GermOnline Release 2.0, a cross-species community annotation knowledgebase on germ cell differentiation

Summary: GermOnline is a web-accessible relational database that enables life scientists to make a significant and sustained contribution to the annotation of genes relevant for the fields of mitosis, meiosis, germ line development and gametogenesis across species. This novel approach to genome annotation includes a platform for knowledge submission and curation as well as microarray data storage and visualization hosted by a global network of servers. Availability: The database is accessible at http://www.germonline.org/. For convenient world-wide access we have set up a network of servers in Europe (http://germonline.unibas.ch/; http://germonline.igh.cnrs.fr/), Japan (http://germonline.biochem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/) and USA (http://germonline.yeastgenome.org/). Supplementary information: Extended documentation of the database is available through the link ‘About GermOnline' at the website

Does oral sodium bicarbonate therapy improve function and quality of life in older patients with chronic kidney disease and low-grade acidosis (the BiCARB trial)? Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Date of acceptance: 01/07/2015 © 2015 Witham et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Acknowledgements UK NIHR HTA grant 10/71/01. We acknowledge the financial support of NHS Research Scotland in conducting this trial.Peer reviewedPublisher PD