Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic Triangular Fibrocartilage Complex Tears with Distal Radioulna Joint Instability: A New Method of Triangular Fibrocartilage Complex Reconstruction

From September 1996 to September 1997, 27 adult patients were diagnosed with chronic triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC) tears with distal radioulna joint (DRUJ) instability in our clinic. They all received the procedure of TFCC reconstruction with partial extensor carpi ulnaris (ECU) tendon combined with or without ulnar shortening. There were 26 males and one female in the study with a mean age of 22.4 years. The follow-up period ranged from 22 to 28 months with a mean of 26.2 months. 24 patients who had positive or zero ulnar variance received the procedure of ulnar shortening. Three patients who had minus ulnar variance only received TFCC reconstruction. After the operation, the DRUJ was fixed by a 2.0 mm K-wire for 4 weeks. All patients underwent a rehabilitation program and they were reexamined at our outpatient department (OPD). The results were graded according to the Mayo Modified Wrist Score. Five of the 27 patients rated their wrists ‘excellent’, 18 rated ‘good’, and 4 rated ‘fair’. Overall, a total of 23 patients (85%) rated satisfactorily and returned to work or sport activities. In the 4 patients rated ‘fair’, mild pain at work and/or exercise, and mildly limited supination were found; however their grip strength was improved at least by 65% compared to the opposite hand. Therefore, as suggested by this study, TFCC reconstruction with partial ECU tendon combined with the ulnar shortening procedure is an alternative method for chronic TFCC tears with DRUJ instability.
Quality of Life of Zambians Living with HIV & AIDS

Introduction: The HIV/AIDS disease has changed individual lifestyles and quality of life, as the HIV disease progresses, quality of life deteriorates. It is vital that the quality of life of PLWHA is assessed regularly so that they are given holistic care that is able to ameliorate the symptoms of ill health and improve their quality of life. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the quality of life of Zambians living with HIV/AIDS Method: The study used a cross-sectional descriptive design. This study was conducted in both rural and urban antiretroviral clinics in Zambia on 160 PLWHA of various HIV ranging from asymptomatic to full blown AIDS. Three scales, “Zambian WHOQOL-HIV Scale” (α = .896); “Zambian WHOHIV SRPB Scale” (α = .699); “Zambian WHOHIV medication dependence Scale” (α = .801); derived from the WHOQOL-HIV were used to assess quality of life. Results: A third of the participants reported very high medication dependence (32.5%). Two thirds of the participants (66%) had good or very good spirituality. Majority of the participants (82.2%) had good or very good quality of life. The results show that the quality of life, medication dependence and spirituality for the Zambian sample were all above average. Quality of life had significant positive relationships with all of its domains and a significant positive relationship with spirituality. clinical stages *Corresponding Author: P. Mweemba Department of Nursing Sciences School of Medicine University of Zambia Email: Prudencia.mweemba@unza.zm or pmweemba@yahoo.com Quality of Life of Zambians Living with HIV & AIDS Conclusion: Because little investigation has been done on quality of life in HIV/AIDS in developing countries such as Zambia, the current study is a vital step in addressing the issue of quality of life. The finding that quality of life of Zambian people living with HIV/AIDS is above average may mean that the preventive and health care programs that are being used for education and provision of antiretroviral medication are yielding good results, this progress should be harnessed.
Perceptual relearning of binocular fusion after hypoxic brain damage: four controlled single-case treatment studies.

OBJECTIVE Hypoxic brain damage is characterized by widespread, diffuse-disseminated brain lesions, which may cause severe disturbances in binocular vision, leading to diplopia and loss of stereopsis, for which no evaluated treatment is currently available. The study evaluated the effects of a novel binocular vision treatment designed to improve binocular fusion and stereopsis as well as to reduce diplopia in patients with cerebral hypoxia. METHOD Four patients with severely reduced convergent fusion, stereopsis, and reading duration due to hypoxic brain damage were treated in a single-subject baseline design, with three baseline assessments before treatment to control for spontaneous recovery (pretherapy), an assessment immediately after a treatment period of 6 weeks (posttherapy), and two follow-up tests 3 and 6 months after treatment to assess stability of improvements. Patients received a novel fusion and dichoptic training using 3 different devices designed to slowly increase fusional and disparity angle. RESULTS After the treatment, all 4 patients improved significantly in binocular fusion, subjective reading duration until diplopia emerged, and 2 of 4 patients improved significantly in local stereopsis. No significant changes were observed during the pretherapy baseline period and the follow-up period, thus ruling out spontaneous recovery and demonstrating long-term stability of treatment effects. CONCLUSIONS This proof-of-principle study indicates a substantial treatment-induced plasticity after hypoxia in the relearning of binocular vision and offers a viable treatment option. Moreover, it provides new hope and direction for the development of effective rehabilitation strategies to treat neurovisual deficits resulting from hypoxic brain damage.
Challenges in conducting multicentre, multidisciplinary, longitudinal studies in children with chronic conditions

OBJECTIVES Conducting longitudinal, multicentre, multidisciplinary research for individuals with chronic conditions can be challenging. Despite careful planning, investigative teams must adapt to foreseen and unforeseen problems. Our objective is to identify challenges encountered and solutions sought in a recently completed observational, longitudinal study of youth with cleft lip and palate as well as their caregivers. METHODS Data for analysis were derived from a 6-year, multicentre, prospective, longitudinal study of youth with cleft conducted from 2009 to 2015 that examined oral health-related quality of life and other related clinical observations over time in youth who had cleft-related surgery compared to those who did not. Youth and their caregivers participating in this study were followed at one of six geographically diverse, multidisciplinary cleft treatment centres in the USA. RESULTS Establishing effective communication, ensuring protocol adherence, safeguarding data quality, recognizing and managing differences across sites, maximizing participant retention, dealing with study personnel turnover, and balancing/addressing clinical and research tasks were particularly exigent issues that arose over the course of the study. Attending to process, ongoing communication within and across sites, and investigator and clinician commitment and flexibility were required to achieve the stated aims of the research. CONCLUSION Studying children with cleft and their caregivers over time created both foreseen and unforeseen challenges. Solutions to these challenges are presented to aid in the design of future longitudinal research in individuals with chronic conditions.
Article in Press Future Generation Computer Systems ( ) – Future Generation Computer Systems Cloud Computing and Emerging It Platforms: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering Computing as the 5th Utility

With the significant advances in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) over the last half century, there is an increasingly perceived vision that computing will one day be the 5th utility (after water, electricity, gas, and telephony). This computing utility, like all other four existing utilities, will provide the basic level of computing service that is considered essential to meet the everyday needs of the general community. To deliver this vision, a number of computing paradigms have been proposed, of which the latest one is known as Cloud computing. Hence, in this paper, we define Cloud computing and provide the architecture for creating Clouds with market-oriented resource allocation by leveraging technologies such as Virtual Machines (VMs). We also provide insights on market-based resource management strategies that encompass both customer-driven service management and computational risk management to sustain Service Level Agreement (SLA)-oriented resource allocation. In addition, we reveal our early thoughts on interconnecting Clouds for dynamically creating global Cloud exchanges and markets. Then, we present some representative Cloud platforms, especially those developed in industries, along with our current work towards realizing market-oriented resource allocation of Clouds as realized in Aneka enterprise Cloud technology. Furthermore, we highlight the difference between High Performance Computing (HPC) workload and Internet-based services workload. We also describe a meta-negotiation infrastructure to establish global Cloud exchanges and markets, and illustrate a case study of harnessing 'Storage Clouds' for high performance content delivery. Finally, we conclude with the need for convergence of competing IT paradigms to deliver our 21st century vision. Computing is being transformed to a model consisting of services that are commoditized and delivered in a manner similar to traditional utilities such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony. In such a model, users access services based on their requirements without regard to where the services are hosted or how they are delivered. Several computing paradigms have promised to deliver this utility computing vision and these include cluster computing, Grid computing, and more recently Cloud computing. businesses and users are able to access applications from anywhere in the world on demand. Thus, the computing world is rapidly transforming towards developing software for millions to consume as a service, rather than to run on their individual computers. At present, it is common to access content across the Internet independently without reference to the underlying hosting infrastructure. This infrastructure consists of data centers that are monitored and maintained around the clock …
Anti-Leukotrienes in the treatment of allergic conjunctivitis and comorbidities in children: An update

Abstract The term "Allergy" actually includes a variety of different diseases (rhinitis, conjunctivitis, asthma, urticaria, and dermatitis) with a common pathological basis linked to the release of chemical mediators such as histamine, platelet-activating factor, arachidonic acid metabolites, and chemotactic factors secreted by mastocytes, basophils, and eosinophils. The key-role of leukotrienes (LTs) as mediators in allergic and inflammatory response justifies possible therapeutic use of leukotriene antagonists in other allergic diseases beyond asthma. LTs modifiers reduce asthma symptoms, short-acting beta2-antagonist (SABA) use, and asthma exacerbations, and improve all indexes of pulmonary function, as measured by the increases in forced expiratory flow at one second (FEV1), peak expiratory flow (PEF), quality of life, and indices of bronchial inflammation (blood eosinophils, inflammatory cells in the bronchial mucosa, exhaled nitric oxide, substance P, neurokinin A, eosinophil cationic protein, and serum myeloperoxidase). Anti-LTs have also been successfully used by some authors to control allergic diseases such as rhinitis, atopic dermatitis, chronic urticaria and allergic conjuncitivitis. Moreover, recently, new reports have been published concerning other conditions (migraine prophylaxis, sleep disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, and nasal polyposis) that broaden the future range of clinical applications. Topical ocular montelukast can be a potential therapeutic drug with a new route of administration that can be used for treatment of allergic conjunctivitis.
Asynchrony in executive networks predicts cognitive slowing in multiple sclerosis.

OBJECTIVE Cognitive slowing is a core neuropsychological symptom of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We aimed to assess the extent to which cognitive slowing in MS was predicted by changes in dorsolateral prefrontal networks. METHOD We assessed patients with relapsing-remitting MS and healthy controls (HCs) on measures of processing speed. Participants underwent a functional MRI while performing a processing speed task to allow assessment of task-based connectivity. RESULTS Patients were slower than HCs on the processing speed tasks. Patients showed attenuated connectivity between right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and task-relevant brain regions compared to HCs during processing speed task performance. Patients' connectivity with DLPFC in these group-disparate networks accounted for significant variability in their performance on processing speed measures administered both in and out of the imaging environment. Specifically, patients who had stronger functional connections with DLPFC in group-disparate networks performed faster than patients with weaker connections with DLPFC in group-disparate networks. CONCLUSION Results suggest that MS-related cognitive slowing can be accounted for by systemic alterations in executive functional networks.
Real time video processing software for the analysis of endoscopic guided-biopsies

The severity in Barrett esophagus disease is, undoubtedly, the possibility of its malignization. To make an early diagnosis in order to avoid possible complications, it is absolutely necessary collect biopsies to make a histological analysis. This should be done under endoscopic control to avoid mucus areas that may co-exist within the columnar epithelial, which could lead to a false diagnosis. This paper presents a video processing software in real-time in order to delineate and enhance areas of interest to facilitate the work of the expert.
Early supplementation with Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001 reduces eczema prevalence to 6 years: does it also reduce atopic sensitization?

The role of probiotics in prevention of allergic disease is still not clear; efficacy may depend on the timing, dose, duration, and specific probiotic used. Using a double‐blind randomized placebo‐controlled trial (Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12607000518460), we have shown that in a high‐risk birth cohort, maternal supplementation from 35 weeks gestation until 6 months if breastfeeding and infant supplementation from birth until 2 years with Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001 (HN001) (6 × 109 cfu/day) halved the cumulative prevalence of eczema at 2 and 4 years. Bifidobacterium animalis subsp lactis HN019 (HN019) (9 × 109 cfu/day) had no significant effect.
Adult-Based Massive Transfusion Protocol Activation Criteria Do Not Work in Children

Abstract Introduction In the adult population, assessment of blood consumption (ABC) score [penetrating mechanism, positive focused assessment sonography for trauma (FAST), systolic blood pressure < 90, and heart rate (HR) > 120] ≥2 identifies trauma patients who require massive transfusion (MT) with sensitivity and specificity of 75 and 86%. We hypothesized that the adult criteria cannot be applied to children, as the vital sign cut-offs are not age-adjusted. We aimed to determine if the use of a shock index, pediatric age-adjusted (SIPA) would improve the discriminate ability of the ABC score in children. Materials and Methods A retrospective review of children age 4 to 15 who received a packed red blood cell (PRBC) transfusion during admission for trauma between 2008 and 2014 was performed. We compared the sensitivity and specificity of ABC score ≥ 2, elevated SIPA, and age-adjusted ABC score (ABC-S) utilizing SIPA in place of HR and BP, to determine the need for MT. Results A total of 50 children were included, 31 received PRBC transfusion within 6 hours of injury, 7 children had a positive FAST, and 3 suffered penetrating trauma, all in the early transfusion group. ABC score ≥ 2 is 29% sensitive and 100% specific at predicting need for MT while ABC-S score ≥ 1 is 65% sensitive and 84% specific. Conclusions Adult-based criteria for activation of MT perform poorly in the pediatric population. The use of SIPA modestly improves the sensitivity of the ABC score in children; however, the sensitivity and specificity of this score are still worse than when used in an adult population. This suggests the need to develop a new score that takes into account the low rate of penetrating trauma and positive FAST in the pediatric population.
Anticipatory psychological distress in women scheduled for diagnostic and curative breast cancer surgery

Background: Psychological distress is a central experience for women facing diagnostic and curative breast cancer surgery. Purpose: The present study was designed to predict anticipatory distress in 187 women scheduled to undergo excisional breast biopsy or lumpectomy. Method: Participants completed questionnaires assessing emotional distress and predictors of this distress (surgery type, worry about the surgical procedure, and worry about what the surgeon will find). Results: The study found that lumpectomy patients experienced greater anticipatory distress than excisional breast biopsy patients on three of the four distress measures (all ps < 0.05) and that worry about what the surgeon might find partially mediated these effects. Conclusion: The results suggest that although women awaiting lumpectomy are more distressed than women awaiting biopsy, both groups report substantial distress, and, consequently, psychosocial interventions are recommended for both groups.
The social integration of complementary and alternative medicine in official health care in Russia

This article examines the social integration of complementary and alternative medicine in official health care in Russia. In so doing, it considers the background to the development of complementary and alternative medicine linked to its cultural roots in Russia, including in the Soviet period. In charting its revival in official medicine from the 1980s to the present day, it draws on original survey and other data from a recent INTAS-funded research project on Russian doctors. The subject is approached from a neo-Weberian perspective, through which the operation of medical interests is analysed in the context of the evolving health marketplace and changing state policies. The article concludes by highlighting the implications of the political debates over integration for the social inclusion of complementary and alternative medicine and the citizenship of both its practitioners and users in Russia.
Cockroach allergen serine proteinases: Isolation, sequencing and signalling via proteinase‐activated receptor‐2

Allergy to the German cockroach (Blattella germanica) is a significant asthma risk factor for inner‐city communities. Cockroach, like other allergens, contains trypsin‐like enzyme activity that contributes to allergenicity and airway inflammation by activating proteinase‐activated receptors (PARs). To date, the enzymes responsible for the proteolytic activity of German cockroach allergen have not been characterized.
A patient decision aid for psoriasis based on current clinical practice guidelines.

OBJECTIVE To develop a patient decision aid (PDA) for psoriasis with content derived from current clinical practice guidelines. DESIGN This PDA was developed in accordance with international patient decision aid standards. Primary sources of treatment outcome information were English-language, evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for plaque psoriasis published between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2010. SETTING Patients with psoriasis from a private practice in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and a focus group of dermatologists across Canada. PARTICIPANTS Focus groups of dermatologists (n=5) and patients with psoriasis (n=7) were convened to provide feedback on balance, clarity, practicality, and items for inclusion and exclusion. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Physician's global assessment, overall lesional assessment, and 75% reduction in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index. RESULTS Efficacy measures selected to reflect good control in the PDA were physician's global assessment (clear or almost clear) or overall lesional assessment (none or very mild) for topical agents and 75% reduction in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index for phototherapy and systemic agents. Where available, outcomes for serious adverse effects were displayed figuratively with efficacy measures. Deliberative questions for self-completion and a values clarification exercise were also incorporated. CONCLUSION This psoriasis PDA was developed according to international standards based on content derived from current clinical practice guidelines.
Correction of the high female hairline.

OBJECTIVES To review a technique and to make quantitative analyses of the senior author's 20-year experience with his preferred technique to correct the high female hairline. METHODS A retrospective review of 29 female patients who underwent the hairline-lowering procedure performed by the same surgeon (S.S.K.). We analyzed preoperative and postoperative standardized photographs by taking measurements from the medial and lateral canthi to the anterior hairline. Facial height, from the menton to the hairline, was also measured. We calculated mean values and then used a 2-tailed, paired t test to evaluate for statistical significance. Patients also underwent evaluation for satisfaction, complications, and aesthetic result. We reevaluated the measurements from the profile view and compared them with the original data. RESULTS The photographed midfrontal hairline position was vertically lowered on average 1.3 cm in patients who underwent a single-stage procedure (P < .001). In retrospect, the analysis was flawed compared with clinical experience. Therefore, the profile views were evaluated, and the correlating true curvilinear advancement was an average of 2.1 cm. Three complications occurred, including 1 major effluvium, 1 minor effluvium, and 1 scar that required revision. Patient satisfaction was extremely high. CONCLUSIONS Advancement of the female hairline by incorporating an irregular trichophytic incision and a posterior scalp advancement flap is an effective and safe technique that has been used by the senior author for more than 2 decades. The average advancement was 2.1 cm in this study. The technique is immediately effective, well tolerated by patients, and associated with minimal complications. Although it is associated with a potentially visible incision, this technique can be used to make the scar virtually invisible.