Hospital Acquired Venous Thromboembolism: A Preventability Assessment.

The American Heart Association has a call to action to reduce hospital acquired venous thromboembolism (HA-VTE) by 20% by the year 2030. There is increasing recognition that quality improvement initiatives for VTE reduction should focus on reducing potentially preventable HA-VTE. The objective of our study was to determine what proportion of HA-VTE events are potentially preventable.

Timing of surgery and radiotherapy in the management of metastatic spine disease: expert opinion.

Background: Combined surgery and radiotherapy, in the treatment of metastatic disease of the spine, is now emerging as the gold standard of care where there is an indication for spinal stabilization and/or surgical decompression. However potential complications related to wound healing can occur with radiation delivered shortly before or after to surgery. The purpose of this study was to understand the practice of leading radiation oncologists and spine surgeons with regards to the timing of radiation (conventional and stereotactic) and surgery for the management of spinal metastases.

Previously Identified Common Post-Injury Adverse Events in Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury-Validation of Existing Literature and Relation to Selected Potentially Modifiable Comorbidities: A Prospective Canadian Cohort Study.

Adverse events (AEs) are common during care in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI). Increased risk of AEs is linked to patient factors including pre-existing comorbidities. Our aim was to examine the relationships between patient factors and common post-injury AEs, and identify potentially modifiable comorbidities.

Rural and Urban Living in Persons with Spinal Cord Injury and Comparing Environmental Barriers, Their Health, and Quality-of-Life Outcomes.

There is worldwide geographic variation in the epidemiology of traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI). The aim of this study was to determine whether environmental barriers, health status, and quality-of-life outcomes differ between patients with tSCI living in rural or urban settings, and whether patients move from rural to urban settings after tSCI. A cohort review of the Rick Hansen SCI Registry (RHSCIR) was undertaken from 2004 to 2012 for one province in Canada.

Self-organized growth of graphene nanomesh with increased gas sensitivity.

A bottom-up chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process for the growth of graphene nanomesh films is demonstrated. The process relies on silicon nanospheres to block nucleation sites for graphene CVD on copper substrates. These spheres are formed in a self-organized way through silicon diffusion through a 5 μm copper layer on a silicon wafer coated with 400 nm of silicon nitride.

Patient and surgeon radiation exposure during spinal instrumentation using intraoperative computed tomography-based navigation.

Background Context: Imaging modalities used to visualize spinal anatomy intraoperatively include X-ray studies, fluoroscopy, and computed tomography (CT). All of these emit ionizing radiation.

Purpose: Radiation emitted to the patient and the surgical team when performing surgeries using intraoperative CT-based spine navigation was compared.

Economic evaluation comparing intraoperative cone beam CT-based navigation and conventional fluoroscopy for the placement of spinal pedicle screws: a patient-level data cost-effectiveness analysis.

Background Context: Pedicle screws are routinely used in contemporary spinal surgery. Screw misplacement may be asymptomatic but is also correlated with potential adverse events. Computer-assisted surgery (CAS) has been associated with improved screw placement accuracy rates.

Adverse events in surgically treated cervical spondylopathic myelopathy: a prospective validated observational study.

Study Design: Prospective observational study.

Objective: Using validated tools to accurately identify and quantify incidence of and risks for inpatient adverse events (AEs) associated with surgical management of cervical spondylopathic myelopathy (CSM) with the goal of assisting physicians and patients in decision making. To identify patient-/disease-/technique-specific, independent risk factors for developing AEs perioperatively and affecting length of stay for patients treated surgically for CSM.

Incidence, impact, and risk factors of adverse events in thoracic and lumbar spine fractures: an ambispective cohort analysis of 390 patients.

Background Context: Adverse events (AEs) in thoracic and lumbar spine fractures are common, but little is known about the type of AEs that are specific to this population. Furthermore, very little is known about the incidence and clinical impact of these AEs on patients in the presence of traumatic spinal cord injury and whether they are treated operatively or nonoperatively.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine primarily the incidence of AEs in patients with thoracic or lumbar spine fractures treated both operatively and nonoperatively and their impact on length of stay (LOS) and secondarily the difference in the incidence of AEs in both neurologically intact and compromised patients.

Prospective analysis of adverse events in surgical treatment of degenerative spondylolisthesis.

Background Context: Surgical adverse event (AE) monitoring is imprecise, of uncertain validity, and tends toward underreporting. Reports focus on specific procedures rather than outcomes in the context of presenting diagnosis. Specific intraoperative (intraop) or postoperative (postop) AEs that may be independently associated with degenerative spondylolisthesis (DS) have never been reported.

The validity of administrative data to classify patients with spinal column and cord injuries.

International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes are used to document patient morbidity in administrative databases. Although administrative data are used for research purposes, the validity of the data to accurately describe clinical diagnostic information is uncertain. We compared the clinical diagnoses for spinal cord and column injuries from a longitudinal patient registry, the Rick Hansen Spinal Cord Injury Registry (RHSCIR), to the ICD-10 spinal injury codes from the Discharge Abstract Database (DAD) at one institution.

Feasibility of patient recruitment into clinical trials of experimental treatments for acute spinal cord injury.

Clinical trials of experimental neuroprotective and neuroregenerative therapies for acute spinal cord injury (SCI) typically require large numbers of patients to be enrolled. An important factor in designing such trials is the number of patients that can be realistically recruited at a given institution. The total number of patients with acute SCI treated at a neurotrauma centre is typically considered when such a site becomes a recruiting centre for a clinical trial.

An ultrasensitive, continuous fluorometric assay for calpain activity.

A rapid, continuous assay for calcium-activated neutral protease activity is described. This assay is based on monitoring the elevation in fluorescence intensity that occurs upon calpainolytic digestion of dichlorotriazinylamino-fluorescein-labeled microtubule-associated protein 2. Tedious separation of peptide products from the protein substrate in this rapid assay is unnecessary, which thus offers two remarkable advantages over conventional caseinolytic assay procedures: (i) it raises sensitivity of detection by about three orders of magnitude, allowing the quantitative determination of calpain in the high picogram range in 10 min; and (ii) it permits a continuous detection of activity, which may prove invaluable in enzyme-mechanism studies that require pre-steady-state measurements.

A possible in vivo mechanism of intermediate transfer by glycolytic enzyme complexes: steady state fluorescence anisotropy analysis of an enzyme complex formation.

Rate constants of dissociation (k(off)) and association (k(on)) of the bienzyme complex yeast glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase--yeast alcohol dehydrogenase have been determined in the absence and presence of NAD or NADH by fluorescence anisotropy measurements. We found that dissociation of the complex is considerably slower than catalytic turnover of either of the enzymes (that is k(off) much less than kcat) irrespective of the presence of coenzymes. A perusal of the literature reveals that this relation invariably applies to all systems studied so far.

Interaction of rabbit muscle enolase and 3-phosphoglycerate mutase studied by ELISA and by batch gel filtration.

The interaction of rabbit skeletal muscle enolase and 3-phosphoglycerate mutase was detected by an ELISA test, a batch gel-filtration technique, and fluorescence anisotropy measurements, and the activity of enolase was determined to be a function of mutase concentration. The apparent dissociation constant of this enzyme complex is approximately 1 microM. This value seems to be independent of the presence (in fluorescence anisotropy measurements) or the absence (in activity as well as in ELISA experiments) of fluorescein isothiocyanate used widely as a label for determining the complex formation between enzymes in fluorescence anisotropy measurements.

Kinetic misinterpretation of a coupled enzyme reaction can lead to the assumption of an enzyme-enzyme interaction. The example of 3-phospho-D-glycerate kinase and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase couple.

The time course of the conversion of 3-phospho-D-glycerate (GriP) to glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate (GraP) catalyzed by 3-phospho-D-glycerate kinase (GriP kinase) and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GraPDH) couple has been reinvestigated. The dependence of the steady-state rate on the dehydrogenase concentration is fully compatible with the consecutive nature of the reaction and therefore is not necessarily related to a complex formation of the two enzymes. To derive a Kd value of a bienzyme complex, as was done by Sukhodolets et al.

Fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase preferentially associates to glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase in a mixture of cytosolic proteins as revealed by fluorescence energy transfer measurements.

Fluorescence energy transfer measurements were implemented for demonstrating the specific character of the interaction between aldolase and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. The enzymes, labeled with monobromobimane (donor) and fluorescein isothiocyanate (acceptor), respectively, were mixed into a cytosol preparation and energy transfer between the two fluorophores was observed to develop. This observation reflecting a contact between the two enzymes, suggests that despite the presence of a multitude of potential macromolecular partners glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and aldolase are capable of recognizing each other in the cytoplasm.

Remarks on the supramolecular organization of the glycolytic system in vivo.

The great latent catalytic capacity, manifested at the extremely high intracellular concentrations and in large apparent kcat/Km values, of the glycolytic enzymes on the one hand and their tendency in experiments in vitro to form functionally-specific flux-enhancing (channeling) complexes on the other, is considered and discussed as an apparent discrepancy. A random association of glycolytic enzymes in vivo is probable.

Structure-activity relationships of new muscarinergic dibenzodioxazocines.

1H-NMR and X-ray conformation studies of new muscarinergic dibenzodioxazocines have been carried out. It is suggested that EGYT-2347 (2-chloro-12-/2-piperidino-ethyl/-dibenzo [d,g] [1, 3, 6] dioxazocine hydrochloride) may exist in solution in at least two distinct conformations, unlike other tricyclic or non-tricyclic compounds having antimuscarinergic activity. One of these conformations possessing an asymmetric, twisted central hetero-ring confined between two phenyl rings is probably the energetically more stable form, while the other having a butterfly-like structure, with mirror symmetry-related phenyl rings as in phenothiazines seems to be more suitable for receptor binding.