The influence of perfusion solution on renal graft viability assessment

BACKGROUND: Kidneys from donors after cardiac or circulatory death are exposed to extended periods of both warm ischemia and intra-arterial cooling before organ recovery. Marshall’s hypertonic citrate (HOC) and Bretschneider’s histidine-tryptophan-ketoglutarate (HTK) preservation solutions are cheap, low viscosity preservation solutions used clinically for organ flushing. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of these two solutions both on parameters used in clinical practice to assess organ viability prior to transplantation and histological evidence of ischemic injury after reperfusion. METHODS: Rodent kidneys were exposed to post-mortem warm ischemia, extended intra-arterial cooling (IAC) (up to 2 h) with preservation solution and reperfusion with either Krebs-Hensleit or whole blood in a transplant model. Control kidneys were either reperfused directly after retrieval or stored in 0.9% saline. Biochemical, immunological and histological parameters were assessed using glutathione-S-transferase (GST) enzymatic assays, polymerase chain reaction and mitochondrial electron microscopy respectively. Vascular function was assessed by supplementing the Krebs-Hensleit perfusion solution with phenylephrine to stimulate smooth muscle contraction followed by acetylcholine to trigger endothelial dependent relaxation. RESULTS: When compared with kidneys reperfused directly post mortem, 2 h of IAC significantly reduced smooth muscle contractile function, endothelial function and upregulated vascular cellular adhesion molecule type 1 (VCAM-1) independent of the preservation solution. However, GST release, vascular resistance, weight gain and histological mitochondrial injury were dependent on the preservation solution used. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that initial machine perfusion viability tests, including ischemic vascular resistance and GST, are dependent on the perfusion solution used during in situ cooling. HTK-perfused kidneys will be heavier, have higher GST readings and yet reduced mitochondrial ischemic injury when compared with HOC-perfused kidneys. Clinicians should be aware of this when deciding which kidneys to transplant or discard

Volume 78, Number 11, December 5, 1958

Background: Social support, acknowledged as a protective factor against diseases, produces positive results in the prognosis of cancer patients. Objective: There is no relevant studies on perceived social support and factors related to Turkish cancer patients. Hence, the present study aimed to determine the demographic characteristics that affect the perceived social support in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy in Turkey. Patients and Methods: This study was designed as a descriptive cross-sectional study. The sample included 423 adult cancer patients who admitted to the Outpatient Chemotherapy Unit of three hospitals in Turkey between March 2014 and August 2014. The data were collected through Demographic Characteristics Form and Cancer-Specific Social Support Scale (CPSSS). Results: Patients were between 19 and 85 years of age with a mean 51.75 years. Almost half of them (40.7%) were primary school graduates, 53.2% were female, 84.6% were married and 85.8% had children. It was found that the patients generally received a high score (127.86 17.44) from the CPSSS scale. The highest scores were obtained on the Confidence Support sub dimension. It was revealed that women and married patients needed more confidence support and general social support (P < 0.05). Social support perceived by primary school graduates was statistically significant to a great extent (P < 0.05). In spite of the difference between the patients with metastasis and their perceived social support grade averages (P 0.05), it was seen that patients with multiple children utilized more confidence support and general social support in social support reception (P < 0.05). Conclusion: The study showed that study participants received a high amount of social support. Age, gender, marital status, number of children, and educational status were determined to affect perceived social support. It is recommended to support the patients who do not receive sufficient social.C1 [Ozbayir, T.; Koze, B. S.] Ege Univ, Fac Nursing, Dept Surg Nursing, Izmir, Turkey.[Gok, F.] Pamukkale Univ, Dept Surg Nursing, Hlth Sci Fac, Denizli, Turkey.[Arican, S.] Univ Hlth Sci, Izmir Bozyaka Educ & Res Hosp, Izmir, Turkey.[Uslu, Y.] Acibadem Univ, Fac Hlth Sci, Dept Nursing, Istanbul, Turkey

Suitability of foramen magnum measurements in sex determination and their clinical significance

Background: The foramen magnum provides a transition between fossa cranii posterior and canalis vertebralis. Medulla oblongata, arteria vertebralis and nervus accessorius spinal part pass through the foramen magnum. In this study, we aimed to make the morphometric measurements of the foramen magnum on computed tomography (CT) and to determine the feasibility of sex determination based on these measurements. Besides sex determination, from a clinical aspect, it is important to know the measurements of the foramen magnum in the normal population in terms of diseases characterised by displacement of the posterior fossa structures through foramen magnum to upper cervical spinal canal such as Chiari malformations and syringomyelia. Materials and methods: All the data for our study was obtained retrospectively from 100 patients (50 males, 50 females) who had a CT scan of the head and neck region in Adnan Menderes University Hospital, Department of Radiology. To examine the foramen magnum in each and every occipital bone, we measured the foramen magnum’s anteroposterior diameter, transverse diameter, the area of the foramen magnum and its circumference. Results: We found that men have a higher average value than women in our study. According to Student’s t-test results; in all measured parameters, there is significant difference between the genders (p &lt; 0.05). When multivariate discriminant function test is performed for all four measurements, the discrimination rate is 64% for all women, 70% for all men and 67% for both genders. Conclusions: As a result of our study, the metric data we obtained will be useful in cases where the skeletons’ sex could not be determined by any other methods. We believe that, our study may be useful for other studies in determining of sex from foramen magnum. Our measurements could give some information of the normal ranges of the foramen magnum in normal population, so that this can contribute to the diagnosis process of some diseases by imaging. (Folia Morphol 2018; 77, 1: 99–104)  

Reservoir management through characterization of smart fields using capacitance-resistance models

Use of smart well technologies to improve the recovery has caught significant attention in the oil industry in the last decade. Capacitance-Resistance (CRM) methodology is a robust data-driven technique for reservoir surveillance. Reservoir sweep is a crucial part of efficient recovery, especially where significant investment is done by means of installation of smart wells that feature inflow control valves (ICVs) that are remotely controllable. However, as it is a relatively newer concept, effective use of this new technology has been a challenge. In this study, the objective is to present the efficient use of ICVs in intelligent fields through the integrated use of capacitance-resistance modeling and smart wells with ICVs. A standard realistic SPE reservoir simulation model of a waterflooding process is used in this study where the smart well ICVs are controlled with conditional statements called procedures in a fully commercial full-physics numerical reservoir simulator. The simulation data is utilized to build the CRM model to obtain the inter-well connectivities at the zonal level beyond only the inter-well connectivity data as smart wells provide control and information on the amount of injection into each layer or zone. Thus, after analyzing the CRM model to detect the inter-well connectivities at the zone/layer-level in an iterative way, the optimum injection not only at the well level but also at the perf/zone level is found. The workflow is outlined as well as the improvements in the results. The smart well technology has been challenged with the associated cost component thus, it is important to present the benefits of this technology with applications in more diverse cases with different workflows. It has been observed that a robust reservoir characterization in an intelligent field can provide an insight into the physics of reservoir including smart wells with ICVs. The results are presented in a comparative way against the base case to illustrate the incremental value of the use of ICVs along with key performance indicators. Most importantly, it has been shown that smart well use without a robust reservoir management strategy does not always lead to successful results. In reservoir management, it is not only important to catch the well level details but also see the big picture at the field level to improve the performance of the reservoirs beyond individual well performances taking into account the interference between wells. This method takes the reservoir surveillance to the next level where reservoir characterization is improved using smart field technologies and capacitance-resistance modeling as a robust cost-effective data-driven method

Illusions and Cloaks for Surface Waves

Open access articleEver since the inception of Transformation Optics (TO), new and exciting ideas have been proposed in the field of electromagnetics and the theory has been modified to work in such fields as acoustics and thermodynamics. The most well-known application of this theory is to cloaking, but another equally intriguing application of TO is the idea of an illusion device. Here, we propose a general method to transform electromagnetic waves between two arbitrary surfaces. This allows a flat surface to reproduce the scattering behaviour of a curved surface and vice versa, thereby giving rise to perfect optical illusion and cloaking devices, respectively. The performance of the proposed devices is simulated using thin effective media with engineered material properties. The scattering of the curved surface is shown to be reproduced by its flat analogue (for illusions) and vice versa for cloaks.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Structure and tectonic evolution of the Anatolian plateau in eastern Turkey

This paper was published by the Geological Society of America (GSA). Copyright 2006, GSA. See also: http://granite.geosociety.org/bookstore/default.asp?oID=0&catID=9&pID=SPE409; http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu/turkey/publications/Barazangi-et-al_2006.htmThe Cenozoic geology and the present lithospheric and upper mantle structure of the Anatolian plateau in eastern Turkey and nearby regions are the result of the final collision and suturing of the continental Arabian plate to the Turkish terranes (i.e., micro-continents). This process of collision and suturing was strongly influenced by three active structures in the region: the Caucasus mountains, the Aegean subduction zone, and the Dead Sea fault system. Understanding these three major tectonic elements are important for the development of a robust model for the formation of the Anatolian plateau. We show that the Anatolian plateau lithosphere in eastern Turkey has no lithospheric mantle, i.e., the crust floats on a partially molten asthenosphere. The average thickness of the crust in the region is approximately 45 km. The uppermost mantle beneath this crustal block strongly attenuates Sn waves and has one of the lowest Pn velocities on earth (about 7.6 km/s). The Anatolian plateau, with an average of 2 km elevation is dissected by numerous active, seismogenic faults (mostly strike-slip and some thrust type). Neogene and Quaternary volcanism with varying composition is widespread and covers more than half of the region. We argue that the northward subduction of the northern and the southern branches of the Neo-Tethyan oceanic lithosphere since the Mesozoic has resulted in the development of arc and back-arc volcanism (i.e., the Pontide and Bitlis systems) and the development of the eastern Anatolian accretionary complex that covers a large area of eastern Turkey. The northward subduction of the southern Neo-Tethys considerably thinned and weakened the overriding Eurasian plate above the descending oceanic lithosphere of the Arabian plate. The final suturing of the continental Arabian plate with the Turkish terranes in the Miocene and the continued convergence of Arabia relative to Eurasia has resulted in the shortening of the accretionary complex both in the forearc and the back-arc regions and the development of a broad zone with numerous strike-slip faults. The mobilization of the Caucasus is also partially a consequence of this convergence. The documented major episode of widespread volcanism at about 11 Ma is probably related to the breakoff of the shallowly descending oceanic segment of the Arabian lithosphere beneath eastern Turkey. The continued convergence of Arabia relative to Eurasia has resulted in the development of the North Anatolian fault (NAF) and subsequently the East Anatolian fault (EAF) in the Pliocene. At about this time, the northern segment of the Dead Sea fault (DSF) also developed in Lebanon and northwest Syria and joined the EAF to form the Anatolian - Arabian - African triple junction in the Maras region of southern Turkey. The development of these fault systems (i.e., NAF, EAF, and DSF) provided the mechanism for the tectonic escape of the Anatolian crustal block towards the Aegean arc system

Newly discovered mutations in the GALNT3 gene causing autosomal recessive hyperostosis-hyperphosphatemia syndrome

Background and purpose Periosteal new bone formation and cortical hyperostosis often suggest an initial diagnosis of bone malignancy or osteomyelitis. In the present study, we investigated the cause of persistent bone hyperostosis in the offspring of two consanguineous parents

Immunoglobulin G: A Potential Treatment to Attenuate Neuroinflammation Following Spinal Cord Injury

# The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Introduction Spinal cord injury (SCI) is caused by two related but mechanistically distinct events: the primary injury to the spinal cord is caused by a mechanic trauma; the secondary injury is a cascade of cellular and molecula