Extracapsular hip fractures. Interlocking techniques. Complications

RESUMEN : Introducción: Las fracturas de la extremidad proximal del fémur que afectan a pacientes en edad geriátrica (pertrocantéreas y subtrocantéreas) junto a las fracturas subcapitales de cadera, presentan un 30% de mortalidad anual, siendo un 5% intrahospitalaria. Posteriormente, las complicaciones asociadas se elevan a un 12% tras el alta hospitalaria Objetivos: Evaluar y analizar la repercusión de las complicaciones de las fracturas extracapsulares de cadera tras el tratamiento con enclavado cefalo-medular en pacientes >65 años. Material y métodos: Se presenta un estudio retrospectivo (enero-octubre del 2019) con un seguimiento medio de 6 meses, en 98 pacientes de mayores de 65 años intervenidos con enclavado cefalomedular. Se han analizado variables demográficas, comorbilidades y complicaciones quirúrgicas. Resultados: 14 pacientes presentaron complicaciones, siendo la más frecuente el cutout (7’14%, n=7). El diámetro del clavo es un factor de riesgo para presentar complicaciones (p=0.004), mientras que el bloqueo dinámico las evita (p=0.017). La hemoglobina alta al ingreso reduce las trasfusiones posteriores (p=0.009) y el enclavado largo las aumenta (p=0.019). El implante tipo GAMMA® y la fractura A3 de la AO acortan el tiempo quirúrgico (p=0.001), mientras que la duración de la cirugía no está relacionada con la aparición de complicaciones (p=0.852). Conclusiones: La longitud y el diámetro del enclavado, así como la utilización de bloqueos dinámicos influyen en las complicaciones postoperatorias. Así mismo, la Hb previa del paciente influye en su evolución clínica. La identificación de los factores que inciden en la aparición de las complicaciones permite el desarrollo de pautas a seguir para evitar su incidencia.ABSTRACT : Introduction: Fractures of the proximal limb of the femur (pertrochanteric and subtrochanteric) together with subcapital hip fractures in the elderly people, present 30% annual mortality, being 5% in-hospital. After hospitalization, 12% of them present any complication. Objectives: To assess and analyze the impact of complications of extracapsular hip fractures after treatment with cephalo-medullary nailing in patients> 65 years. Material and methods: A retrospective study is presented (January-October 2019) with a mean follow-up of 6 months, in 98 patients older than 65 years of age who underwent surgery with cephalomedullary nailing. Demographic variables, comorbidities, and surgical complications have been analyzed. Results: 14 patients presented complications, the most frequent being the cut-out (7.14%, n = 7). Nail diameter is a risk factor for presenting complications (p = 0.004), while dynamic blockage avoids them (p = 0.017). High hemoglobin on admission reduces subsequent transfusions (p = 0.009) and long nailing increases them (p = 0.019). The GAMMA® type implant and the A3 fracture of the AO shorten the surgical time (p = 0.001), but the surgery duration is not related to the complications (p = 852). Conclusions: The length and diameter of the nailing, as well as the use of dynamic blocks, influence postoperative complications. Likewise, previous Hb influences clinical evolution. The identification of the factors that influence the appearance of complications allows the development of guidelines to be followed to avoid their incidence.Grado en Medicin

Impact of time variability in off-line writer identification and verification

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. F. Alonso-Fernández, J. Fiérrez, A. Gilpérez, J Ortega-García, "Impact of time variability in off-line writer identification and verification" in 6th International Symposium on Image and Signal Processing and Analysis (ISPA), Salzburg (Austria), 2009, pp. 540 - 545One of the biggest challenges in person recognition using biometric systems is the variability in the acquired data. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of an increasing time lapse between reference and test biometric data consisting of static images of handwritten signatures and texts. We use for our experiments two recognition approaches exploiting information at the global and local levels, and the BiosecurlD database, containing 3,724 signature images and 532 texts of 133 individuals acquired in four acquisition sessions distributed along a 4 months time span. We report results of the recognition systems working both in verification (one-to-one) and identification (one-to-many) mode. The results show the extent of the impact that the time separation between samples under comparison has on the recognition rates, being the local approach more robust to the time lapse than the global one. We also observe in our experiments that recognition based on handwritten texts provides higher accuracy than recognition based on signatures.This work has been supported by Spanish MCYT TEC2006-13141-C03-03 project

Robustness of signature verification systems to imitators with increasing skills

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. F. Alonso-Fernández, J. Fiérrez, A. Gilpérez, J. Galbally, J. Ortega-García, "Robustness of Signature Verification Systems to Imitators with Increasing Skills" in International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), Barcelona (Madrid), 2009, 728 - 732In this paper, we study the impact of an incremental level of skill in the forgeries against signature verification systems. Experiments are carried out using both off-line systems, involving the discrimination of signatures written on a piece of paper, and on-line systems, in which dynamic information of the signing process (such as velocity and acceleration) is also available. We use for our experiments the BiosecurID database, which contains both on-line and off-line versions of signatures, acquired in four sessions across a 4 month time span with incremental level of skill in the forgeries for different sessions. We compare several scenarios with different size and variability of the enrolment set, showing that the problem of skilled forgeries can be alleviated as we consider more signatures for enrolment.This work has been supported by the TEC2006-13141- C03-03 project of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology

Off-line signature verification using contour features

Proceedings of the International Conference on Frontiers in Hadwriting Recognition (ICFHR 2008)An off-line signature verification system based on contour features is presented. It works at the local image level, and encodes directional properties of signature contours and the length of regions enclosed inside letters. Results obtained on a sub-corpus of the MCYT signature database shows that directional-based features work much better than length-based features. Results are comparable to existing approaches based on different features. It is also observed that combination of the proposed features does not provide improvements in performance, maybe to some existing correlation among them.This work has been supported by Spanish project TEC2006-13141-C03-03, and by European Commission IST-2002-507634 Biosecure NoE

Habitat distribution of migratory and sedentary blackcaps Sylvia atricapilla wintering in southern Iberia: a morphological and biogeochemical approach

In migratory species, the way in which conspecifics from different breeding populations 3 are distributed during the non-breeding period is important from and ecological, 4 evolutionary and conservation perspective, but such knowledge is still limited for most 5 species. Migratory and sedentary blackcaps Sylvia atricapilla wintering in southern Spain 6 can occupy two habitat types: forests and shrublands. According to earlier studies, 7 blackcaps prefer forests over shrublands, and residents remain nearly restricted to forests. 8 However, whether migrants with different breeding origin occupy the two habitats 9 differently is unknown. We used morphological and biogeochemical data (hydrogen isotope ratios measured on feathers: δ2 10 Hf), which show variation along the breeding range 11 of the species, to answer this question. Isotope analyses supported the reliability of 12 morphology as a method for distinguishing between migratory and sedentary blackcaps in 13 sympatry, showing that sedentary individuals are rare in shrublands while migratory ones are abundant in both habitat types. However, migratory blackcaps scored similar δ2 14 Hf 15 values in forests and shrublands, and neither did vary in structural size or flight 16 morphology between habitats. Our study suggests that migrants from a wide range of 17 breeding origins end up mixing between forests and shrublands, which may explain the 18 patterns of variation in space and time in the abundance of blackcaps in this area, and 19 supports the view that inequalities may arise among migrants with the same origin but 20 wintering in different habitats. Such inequalities might carry over into other stages of 21 blackcaps’ life cycle contributing to the regulation of its migratory population

Conservación de poblaciones singulares ante el cambio climático: el caso de las currucas capirotadas ibéricas

Depto. de Biodiversidad, Ecología y EvoluciónFac. de Ciencias BiológicasTRUEpu

COVID‑19 vaccine literacy in patients with systemic autoimmune diseases

Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Granada/CBUA.COVID-19 related infodemic is a threat to the successful COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. This might be especially apparent for patients with autoimmune diseases since there is no data available about the balance between benefits and risks of the newly developed COVID-19 vaccines in this population. We aim (i) to evaluate vaccine literacy skills in a population of patients with systemic autoimmune diseases, (ii) to examine the potential associations between vaccine literacy skills and sociodemographic characteristics and (iii) to analyze the relationships between attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about current vaccinations and vaccine literacy skills and sociodemographic characteristics. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 319 patients with systemic autoimmune diseases (92% females; 49.5% of patients in the 31–50 years age category). The vaccine literacy levels were determined using the Health Literacy about Vaccination in adulthood in Italian (HLVa-IT). Sociodemographic characteristics including gender, age, country and area of residence, civil status, socioeconomic status, educational attainment and occupational status were evaluated. The mean vaccine literacy functional and interactive-critical scores were 2.59 ± 0.74 and 3.07 ± 0.60, respectively. The vaccine literacy interactive-critical score was higher in females than in males (p = 0.048). Interactive-critical scores were associated with the area of residence, civil status and socioeconomic status, with the highest score in urban area of ≥ 100.000 inhabitants (p = 0.045), in widow patients (p = 0.023) and in patients with high socioeconomic status (p = 0.018). Significant differences were observed between the different education levels, for both the functional and the interactive-critical scores (p = 0.002 and p < 0.001, respectively), the highest score was observed in patients who completed a university degree. The level of vaccine literacy for functional and interactive-critical scales were medium. Area of residence, civil status and socioeconomic status represented determinants of vaccine literacy interactive-critical scale. Educational attainment also contributes to vaccine literacy functional scale. Insight into these factors is required to ensure an optimal vaccine literacy level in patients with autoimmune diseases.Universidad de Granada/CBU

El análisis de isótopos estables revela sesgos en el funcionamiento de un método morfológico para diferenciar el comportamiento migratorio de los petirrojos Erithacus rubecula

Morphological methods to distinguish between avian groups of research interest (e.g. different sexes, populations or cryptic species) need to be externally validated to ensure reliable performance across situations. In this study, we used stable hydrogen isotope ratios of feathers (δ2Hf) to test the validity of morphological classification functions (MCFs) previously designed to assess the migratory behaviour of European Robins Erithacus rubecula wintering in southern Iberia. Our results show that a great number of migrants (mostly females and juveniles) were erroneously assigned as sedentary, which could compromise the reliability of previous ecological studies that made use of these MCFs. The development of improved MCFs or the use of alternative differentiation methods (δ2Hf) could help us to gain a more realistic insight into the habitat distribution and ecological interactions of sympatric migratory and sedentary robins overwintering in southern Iberia.Los métodos morfológicos para distinguir grupos de aves con interés de investigación (e.g. distinción de sexos, poblaciones o especies crípticas) requieren de validación independiente para asegurar su funcionamiento adecuado de forma consistente. En este estudio, usamos la relación de isótopos estables del hidrógeno en las plumas (δ2Hf) para comprobar la validez de las funciones de clasificación morfológicas (MCFs) diseñadas con anterioridad para identificar el comportamiento migratorio de los petirrojos Erithacus rubecula invernantes en el sur ibérico. Los resultados revelaron que un gran número de migrantes (sobre todo hembras y jóvenes) fueron clasificados erróneamente como sedentarios, lo que podría comprometer la fiabilidad de los estudios ecológicos previos que han hecho uso de estas MCFs. El desarrollo de MCFs mejoradas o el uso de métodos de diferenciación alternativos (δ2Hf) podrían ayudarnos a obtener una idea más realista acerca de la distribución entre hábitats e interacciones ecológicas de los petirrojos migratorios y sedentarios que invernan en simpatría en el sur ibérico

Higher versus lower nut consumption and changes in cognitive performance over two years in a population at risk of cognitive decline: a cohort study

Background: Tree nuts and peanuts (henceforth, nuts) are nutrient-dense foods rich in neuroprotective components; thus, their consumption could benefit cognitive health. However, evidence to date is limited and inconsistent regarding the potential benefits of nuts for cognitive function. Objective: To prospectively evaluate the association between nut consumption and 2-y changes in cognitive performance in older adults at cognitive decline risk. Methods: A total of 6,630 participants aged 55 to 75 y (mean age 65.0±4.9 y, 48.4% women) with overweight/obesity and metabolic syndrome completed a validated semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire and a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests at baseline and a 2-y follow-up. Composite cognitive scores were used to assess global, general, attention, and executive function domains. Nut consumption was categorized as Results: Nut consumption was positively associated with 2-y changes in general cognitive function (P-trend Conclusion: Frequent nut consumption was associated with a smaller decline in general cognitive performance over 2 y in older adults at risk of cognitive decline. Randomized clinical trials to verify our findings are warranted