Evaluation of porous polyethylene for external ear reconstruction

Autogenous rib cartilage and silicone rubber are materials currently used for ear reconstruction. Increased morbidity and operative time with rib cartilage grafts and a high rate of extrusion with silicone implants render them less than ideal for reconstruction of the human ear. The purpose of the current investigation is to determine the efficacy of porous polyethylene as an alternative synthetic material for ear reconstruction. Porous polyethylene and silicone rubber discs of equal sizes in two thicknesses were implanted in lieu of the cartilage in the external ear of eight baboons. Histological evaluation of the sites after nine weeks revealed excellent anchorage of the thin porous polyethylene implants (1.5 mm) in the surrounding tissues. Silicone rubber implants, however, were encapsulated in a thickened granulation tissue capsule. When thicker implants (3.0 mm) were used, exposure or extrusion occurred in all cases. Porous polyethylene implants demonstrated only partial exposure; half of the silicone rubber implants were extruded; and the other two silicone rubber implants were almost completely extruded. Porous polyethylene was thus better incorporated into the soft tissues than silicone rubber as long as the overlying soft tissues were not stressed by an oversized implant or inadequate soft tissue coverage.

Decreased neutrophil respiratory burst on exposure to cobalt-chrome alloy and polystyrene in vitro

The effect of biomaterials on the superoxide-producing ability of neutrophils was studied. Human peripheral blood neutrophils were incubated with cobalt-base alloy (F-75) or polystyrene beads of a nonphagocytosable size. Respiratory burst activity was studied by measuring superoxide dismutase inhibitable reduction of cytochrome C. Neutrophils were found to release no more superoxide anion on incubation for up to 3 h with either material in a protein-free medium than controls without foreign material. However, the ability of neutrophils incubated with either biomaterial to subsequently respond to phorbol myristate acetate challenge was decreased (p less than 0.05). Chemical analysis of supernatants for the F-75 samples showed a high concentration of cobalt in the medium within 1 h of incubation. Minimal chromium and nickel was detected. No correlation could be demonstrated between metal in solution and the respiratory burst defect in neutrophils. Instead it appears that interaction of cells with either surface was the critical event in altering the response to phorbol myristate acetate. This observed functional defect may play an important role in rendering tissue around implanted biomaterials susceptible to infections.

Metabolite and enzyme profiles of glycogen metabolism in Methanococcoides methylutens

When a buffered anaerobic cell suspension of Methanococcoides methylutens was maintained under methanol-limited conditions, intracellular glycogen and hexose phosphates were consumed rapidly and a very small amount of methane formed at 4 h of a starvation period. When methanol was supplemented after a total of 20 h of starvation, a reverse pattern was observed: the glycogen level and the hexose phosphate pool increased, and formation of methane took place after a lag period of 90 min. A considerable amount of methane was formed in 120 min after its detection with a rate of 0.18 micromol mg(-1) protein min(-1). When methane formation decreased after 270 min of incubation and finally came to a halt, probably due to complete assimilation of supplemented methanol, the levels of glycogen and hexose monophosphates decreased once again. However fructose 1,6-diphosphate levels showed a continuous increase even after exhaustion of methane formation. In contrast to the hexose phosphate pool, levels of other metabolites showed a small increase after addition of methanol. The enzyme profile of glycogen metabolism showed relatively high levels of triose phosphate isomerase. Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase reacted with NADPH with a three-fold higher activity as compared to that with NADH.

Human neutrophil response to short-term exposure to F-75 cobalt-based alloy

The effect of biomaterials on the activation of human neutrophils was studied. Human neutrophils were incubated with F-75 cobalt-based alloy or polystyrene microspheres of a nonphagocytosable size with two times total neutrophil plane surface area. Scanning and transmission electron microscope (SEM, TEM), energy dispersive x-ray microanalysis (EDX), and graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy (GFAAS) were used to analyze changes in cellular morphology and metal content. This report presents evidence that human PMNs display morphological changes related to foreign material challenge, including activation on F-75 bead surfaces, pinocytosis of corrosion products, formation of intracellular vacuoles, degranulation, etc. Moreover, when PMNs were present, the corrosion release rate of F-75 increased as much as three times over cell-free controls.

Calcium scoring in low-dose ungated chest CT scans using convolutional long-short term memory networks

We aimed to develop a novel deep-learning based method for automatic coronary artery calcium (CAC) quantification in low-dose ungated computed tomography attenuation correction maps (CTAC). In this study, we used convolutional long-short -term memory deep neural network (conv-LSTM) to automatically derive coronary artery calcium score (CAC) from both standard CAC scans and low-dose ungated scans (CT-attenuation correction maps). We trained convLSTM to segment CAC using 9543 scans. A U-Net model was trained as a reference method. Both models were validated in the OrCaCs dataset (n=32) and in the held-out cohort (n=507) without prior coronary interventions who had CTAC standard CAC scan acquired contemporarily. Cohen's kappa coefficients and concordance matrices were used to assess agreement in four CAC score categories (very low: <10, low:10-100; moderate:101-400 and high >400). The median time to derive results on a central processing unit (CPU) was significantly shorter for the conv-LSTM model- 6.18s (inter quartile range [IQR]: 5.99, 6.3) than for UNet (10.1s, IQR: 9.82, 15.9s, p<0.0001). The memory consumption during training was much lower for our model (13.11Gb) in comparison with UNet (22.31 Gb). Conv-LSTM performed comparably to UNet in terms of agreement with expert annotations, but with significantly shorter inference times and lower memory consumption.

Secondary Intra-Abdominal Pregnancy: A Case Report

Abdominal pregnancy is extremely rare, and has been historically defined as an implantation in the peritoneal cavity exclusive of tubal, ovarian and intraligamentary pregnancy. Abdominal pregnancy can be primary or secondary. The presence of abdominal pregnancy is associated with increased maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. The reported incidence of abdominal pregnancy ranges from 1 per 2200 to 1 per 10,200 pregnancies1. The early recognition and management of the same is necessary to prevent untoward complications. This case report describes an interesting case of a 16 year primigravida with a live secondary abdominal pregnancy. NJOG 2011 Nov-Dec; 6 (2): 44-46 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/njog.v6i2.6756