Evaluation of penetrating cardiac stab wounds.

Background: The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with unfavourable outcome following stab wounds to the heart in order to improve selection of patients who may benefit from resuscitative effort.

Methods: From February to March, variables were collected from medical records of patients sustaining cardiac trauma. The inclusion criterion was the presence of a penetrating cardiac injury confirmed intraoperatively.

Improved sequencing of oxidized cysteine and methionine containing peptides using electron transfer dissociation.

Oxidative modifications to the side chains of sulfur-containing amino acids often limit the number of product ions formed during collision-induced dissociation (CID) and thus make it difficult to obtain sequence information for oxidized peptides. In this work, we demonstrate that electron-transfer dissociation (ETD) can be used to improve the sequence information obtained from peptides with oxidized cysteine and methionine residues. In contrast to CID, ETD is found to be much less sensitive to the side-chain chemistry, enabling extensive sequence information to be obtained in cases where CID fails to provide this information.