373 research outputs found
An improved method of supercharged transposed latissimus dorsi flap with the skin paddle for the management of a complicated lumbosacral defect
OBJECTIVE: Treatment of nonhealing wounds of lower back often poses a powerful challenge. We present one of the first
report of treatment of a lumbosacral defect with a supercharged latissimus dorsi flap with the skin paddle.
CASE REPORT: We report a case of a 59 yearold man with myeloma of the sacral spine who underwent radiotherapy and chemotherapy and subsequently, laminectomies and placement of hardware for ongoing paresis and spine instability. Then, he developed an open wound and osteomyelitis of the spine with culture positive tuberculous granulomas. After multiple surgical debridement, he presented to our service and was treated with a single stage debridement followed by the performance of a latissimus dorsi musculocutaneous flap based on paraspinal perforators and supercharged.
RESULTS: This solution, allowed for augmentation of blood flow to the muscle with the inferior gluteal artery, provided coverage of the defect resistant to the pressure, and simplified post-operative management of the patient.
CONCLUSIONS: Alternative treatment options, including free tissue transfer, posed difficulties in finding suitable recipient vessels near the defect, in inserting the flap so as to restore its original length without compromising blood flow, and in postoperative care of the patient. Treatment of a lumbosacral defect with a supercharged latissimus dorsi flap with the skin paddle may represent a milestone procedure for complicated lower spine wounds
An improved method of supercharged transposed latissimus dorsi flap with the skin paddle for the management of a complicated lumbosacral defect
OBJECTIVE:
Treatment of non-healing wounds of lower back often poses a powerful challenge. We present one of the first report of treatment of a lumbosacral defect with a supercharged latissimus dorsi flap with the skin paddle.
CASE REPORT:
We report a case of a 59 year-old man with myeloma of the sacral spine who underwent radiotherapy and chemotherapy and subsequently, laminectomies and placement of hardware for ongoing paresis and spine instability. Then, he developed an open wound and osteomyelitis of the spine with culture positive tuberculous granulomas. After multiple surgical debridement, he presented to our service and was treated with a single stage debridement followed by the performance of a latissimus dorsi musculocutaneous flap based on paraspinal perforators and supercharged.
RESULTS:
This solution, allowed for augmentation of blood flow to the muscle with the inferior gluteal artery, provided coverage of the defect resistant to the pressure, and simplified post-operative management of the patient.
CONCLUSIONS:
Alternative treatment options, including free tissue transfer, posed difficulties in finding suitable recipient vessels near the defect, in inserting the flap so as to restore its original length without compromising blood flow, and in postoperative care of the patient. Treatment of a lumbosacral defect with a supercharged latissimus dorsi flap with the skin paddle may represent a milestone procedure for complicated lower spine wounds
The Physics of Cluster Mergers
Clusters of galaxies generally form by the gravitational merger of smaller
clusters and groups. Major cluster mergers are the most energetic events in the
Universe since the Big Bang. Some of the basic physical properties of mergers
will be discussed, with an emphasis on simple analytic arguments rather than
numerical simulations. Semi-analytic estimates of merger rates are reviewed,
and a simple treatment of the kinematics of binary mergers is given. Mergers
drive shocks into the intracluster medium, and these shocks heat the gas and
should also accelerate nonthermal relativistic particles. X-ray observations of
shocks can be used to determine the geometry and kinematics of the merger. Many
clusters contain cooling flow cores; the hydrodynamical interactions of these
cores with the hotter, less dense gas during mergers are discussed. As a result
of particle acceleration in shocks, clusters of galaxies should contain very
large populations of relativistic electrons and ions. Electrons with Lorentz
factors gamma~300 (energies E = gamma m_e c^2 ~ 150 MeV) are expected to be
particularly common. Observations and models for the radio, extreme
ultraviolet, hard X-ray, and gamma-ray emission from nonthermal particles
accelerated in these mergers are described.Comment: 38 pages with 9 embedded Postscript figures. To appear in Merging
Processes in Clusters of Galaxies, edited by L. Feretti, I. M. Gioia, and G.
Giovannini (Dordrecht: Kluwer), in press (2001
ADI splitting schemes for a fourth-order nonlinear partial differential equation from image processing
We present directional operator splitting schemes for the numerical solution of a fourth-order, nonlinear partial differential evolution equation which arises in image processing. This equation constitutes the H−1-gradient flow of the total variation and represents a prototype of higher-order equations of similar type which are popular in imaging for denoising, deblurring and inpainting problems. The efficient numerical solution of this equation is very challenging due to the stiffness of most numerical schemes. We show that the combination of directional splitting schemes with implicit time-stepping provides a stable and computationally cheap numerical realisation of the equation
Loss of Arf4 causes severe degeneration of the exocrine pancreas but not cystic kidney disease or retinal degeneration
Arf4 is proposed to be a critical regulator of membrane protein trafficking in early secretory pathway. More recently, Arf4 was also implicated in regulating ciliary trafficking, however, this has not been comprehensively tested in vivo. To directly address Arf4\u27s role in ciliary transport, we deleted Arf4 specifically in either rod photoreceptor cells, kidney, or globally during the early postnatal period. Arf4 deletion in photoreceptors did not cause protein mislocalization or retinal degeneration, as expected if Arf4 played a role in protein transport to the ciliary outer segment. Likewise, Arf4 deletion in kidney did not cause cystic disease, as expected if Arf4 were involved in general ciliary trafficking. In contrast, global Arf4 deletion in the early postnatal period resulted in growth restriction, severe pancreatic degeneration and early death. These findings are consistent with Arf4 playing a critical role in endomembrane trafficking, particularly in the pancreas, but not in ciliary function
Holographic Foam, Dark Energy and Infinite Statistics
Quantum fluctuations of spacetime give rise to quantum foam, and black hole
physics dictates that the foam is of holographic type. Applied to cosmology,
the holographic model requires the existence of dark energy which, we argue, is
composed of an enormous number of inert ``particles'' of extremely long
wavelength. These "particles" necessarily obey infinite statistics in which all
representations of the particle permutation group can occur. For every boson or
fermion in the present observable universe there could be such
"particles". We also discuss the compatibility between the holographic
principle and infinite statistics.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX; added references and footnotes; version to appear in
Physics Letters
Fermion-scalar interactions with domain wall fermions
Domain wall fermions are defined on a lattice with an extra direction the
size of which controls the chiral properties of the theory. When gauge fields
are coupled to domain wall fermions the extra direction is treated as an
internal flavor space. Here it is found that this is not the case for scalar
fields. Instead, the interaction takes place only along the link that connects
the boundaries of the extra direction. This reveals a richness in the way
different spin particles are coupled to domain wall fermions. As an
application, 4-Fermi models are studied using large N techniques and the
results are supported by numerical simulations with N=2. It is found that the
chiral properties of domain wall fermions in these models are good across a
large range of couplings and that a phase with parity-flavor broken symmetry
can develop for negative bare masses if the number of sites along the extra
direction is finite.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 8 eps figures; comment regarding the width of Aoki
phase added in sec. 3; references adde
Some doubts on the validity of the foreground Galactic contribution subtraction from microwave anisotropies
The Galactic foreground contamination in CMBR anisotropies, especially from
the dust component, is not easily separable from the cosmological or
extragalactic component. In this paper, some doubts will be raised concerning
the validity of the methods used to date to remove Galactic dust emission in
order to show that none of them achieves its goal.
First, I review the recent bibliography on the topic and discuss critically
the methods of foreground subtraction: the cross-correlation with templates,
analysis assuming the spectral shape of the Galactic components, the "maximum
entropy method", "internal linear combination", and "wavelet-based high
resolution fitting of internal templates". Second, I analyse the galactic
latitude dependence from WMAP data. The frequency dependence is discussed with
the data in the available literature. The result is that all methods of
subtracting the Galactic contamination are inaccurate. The galactic latitude
dependence analysis or the frequency dependence of the anisotropies in the
range 50-250 GHz put a constraint on the maximum Galactic contribution in the
power spectrum to be less than a ~10% (68% C. L.) for a ~1 degree scale, and
possibly higher for larger scales.
The origin of most of the signal in the CMBR anisotropies is not Galactic. In
any case, the subtraction of the Galaxy is not accurate enough to allow a
"precision Cosmology"; other sources of contamination (extragalactic, solar
system) are also present.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, accepted to be published in J. Astrophys. Ast
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