The Surgical Management of Hydatid Cyst of the Liver: What is New?

Liver hydatid cyst is a disease of zoonosis caused by Echinococcus granulosus or less frequently by Echinococcus multilocularis and Echinococcus oligarthrus. The primary carriers are canines, while human beings are secondary hosts. Early diagnosis is important for cysts not to become complicated and for the treatment not to get difficult. The most effective treatment of uncomplicated hydatid cyst is to reduce the dead space of the cavity and to discharge the fluid as much as possible. However, if the cysts get complex, there is no standard treatment management defined other than offered management options by authors. In complex conditions, the treatment is determined according to the stage of the cyst and the relation of the cyst with biliary ducts or surrounding organs. In this chapter, the treatment regimens of liver hydatid disease mainly based on interventions and surgical operations are going to take a part

Psychophysiological Responses to Competition and the Big Five Personality Traits

This study examines the relationship between psychophysiological arousal, cognitive anxiety, and personality traits in young taekwondo athletes. A total of 20 male and 10 female taekwondo athletes (mean age = 18.6 years; +/- 1.8) volunteered for the study. The Five Factor Personality Inventory and the state scale of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) were used to measure personality and cognitive state anxiety. Electrodermal activity (EDA) was measured twice, one day and approximately one hour prior to the competition, to determine psychophysiological arousal. Descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlations, and stepwise regression were used to analyze the data. Several ``Big Five{''} facets were related to the EDA delta scores that were measured both one day and one hour before the competition. Two stepwise regressions were conducted to examine whether personality traits could significantly predict both EDA delta scores. The final model, containing only neuroticism from the Big Five factors, can significantly explain the variations in the EDA delta scores measured one day before the competition. Agreeableness can significantly explain variations in the EDA delta scores measured one hour before the competition. No relationship was found between cognitive anxiety and the EDA delta scores measured one hour before the competition. In conclusion, personality traits, especially agreeableness and neuroticism, might be useful in understanding arousal responses to competition

THE ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF LIQUIDAMBAR ORIENTALIS MILL. AGAINST FOOD PATHOGENS AND ANTIOXIDANT CAPACITY OF LEAF EXTRACTS

Background: Medicinal plants are an important source of substances which are claimed to induce antimicrobial, antimutagenic and antioxidant effects. Many plants have been used due to their antimicrobial treatments. Antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of L. orientalis have not been reported to the present day. The aim of this work was to investigate of the antimicrobial and antioxidant potentials of different extracts from L. orientalis. Materials and Methods: The extracts were screened for antimicrobial activity against different food pathogens. These bacteria include 4 Gram positive and 3 Gram negative bacteria and one fungi. The leaf extracts of plant were tested by disc diffusion assay. The MIC was evaluated on plant extracts as antimicrobial activity. In addition to, the plant extracts were tested against the stable DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picryl-hydrazyl-hydrate) free-radical. Results: The acetone, ethanol and methanol extracts of L. orientalis showed maximum inhibition zone of 12 mm against Yersinia enterocolitica, Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus. In addition to, the methanol extract displayed a strong antioxidant activity (trolox equivalent = 2.23 mM). Conclusion: L. orientalis extracts have antimicrobial, and antioxidant potential. Our results support the use of this plant in traditional medicine and suggest that some of the plant extracts possess compounds with good antibacterial properties that can be used as antibacterial agents in the search for new drugs

Patellar tendon ossification after partial patellectomy: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Patellar tendon ossification is a rare pathology that may be seen as a complication after sleeve fractures of the tibial tuberosity, total patellectomy during arthroplasty, intramedullary nailing of tibial fractures, anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction with patellar tendon autograft and knee injury without fracture. However, its occurrence after partial patellectomy surgery has never been reported in the literature.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We present the case of a 35-year-old Turkish man with a comminuted inferior patellar pole fracture that was treated with partial patellectomy. During the follow-up period, his patellar tendon healed with ossification and then ruptured from the inferior attachment to the tibial tubercle. The ossification was excised and the tendon was subsequently repaired.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of patellar tendon ossification occurring after partial patellectomy. Orthopaedic surgeons are thus cautioned to be conscious of this rare complication after partial patellectomy.</p

Computationally-efficient algorithms for real-time ECG baseline removal

ECG signal processing has been one of the major studied topics in the biomedical field. The introduction of new techniques and the extensions to the previous keep constantly evolving the span of the ECG research, providing a true realisation of the problems specific to each new approach. For this reason, thorough data analysis and accuracy evaluation have been the most significant tools in effective quantifying of ECG noise elimination techniques. The ECG signal is generally defined to have a spectral content between 50 mHz and 150 Hz with a few millivolts in amplitude, and identified as susceptible to physiological and environmental interferences. The elimination of noise interferences, in particular the baseline wander, is a major concern in preserving the ECG signal integrity (i.e the ST segment) due to the overlapping spectral content of noise sources with this segment. The inherent complexity of such a problem has led to computationally-intensive algorithms in the literature (i.e. Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), Wavelet Transforms (WT) and others) and the removal of the baseline drift is acquired off-line with powerful simulation tools. The adaptations of these methods for ambulatory designs, on the other hand, demonstrate substantial accuracy degradation due to scaling. Therefore, real-time approaches to match comparable accuracy to the computational intensive algorithms are yet to be proposed. This research investigates a computationally-efficient baseline wander removal technique and targets comparable performance to its computational off-line counterparts reported in the literature while preserving the signal integrity of the ECG. This work introduces a novel hardware-efficient real-time baseline estimation method based on three distinctive ``isoelectric'' fiducial point detections per heart beat. These detected points are cubic spline interpolated to achieve a realistic representation of the baseline estimation, and removed from the noisy signal to provide an ``undistorted'' ECG signal representation. Computational efficiency of this approach is further improved with a novel weighted piecewise linear interpolation technique. This approach targets non-uniformly sampled systems with less computational requirements compared to the higher order polynomial interpolation. The MCU-based real-time hardware system realisation of these algorithms demonstrates accurate ambulatory system response and this is the first tested system level design addressing baseline wander removal with detailed analysis. The validated tests have presented original contributions for baseline wander detection and removal by tackling one of the most crucial challenges currently present in clinically valid ECG signal processing. The accuracy and the computational requirements of the developed algorithms show real-time capabilities of the overall system and challenge its computational ECG signal processing counterparts.Open Acces