Functional soft palate reconstruction.

Background: The excision of oropharyngeal carcinoma of more than 50% of the soft palate followed by static reconstruction may result in functional deficits, including velopharyngeal insufficiency, swallowing, and speech difficulties. We describe a functional soft palate reconstruction technique aimed at restoring aeromechanical and acoustic functions, enabling swallowing without nasal regurgitation and speech with low nasalance.

Material And Methods: We developed a new operative technique, using muscle transfer and a free flap to create a dynamic reconstruction.

Recruitment, follow-up and survival in an 11-country cohort study of patients at the end of life and their relatives.

Background: Large, international cohort studies generate high-level evidence, but are resource intense. In end-of-life care such studies are scarce. Hence, planning for future studies in terms of data on screening, recruitment, retention and survival remains a challenge.

Open Ecosystem Through Secure Plug and Play Interoperability: An Overview.

Background: Interoperability is a critical enabler for integrated Personalized Diabetes Management (iPDM), automated insulin delivery (AID), and the digital transformation of healthcare in general. However, manufacturers still create closed ecosystems (ie, solutions designed to work end-to-end minimizing collaboration with other organizations) with proprietary interfaces because of various interoperability challenges. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of how to achieve organizational interoperability in an open ecosystem (ie, solutions designed to integrate different organizations via interoperability standards) for diabetes management.

Stratifying vascular disease patients into homogeneous subgroups using machine learning and FLAIR MRI biomarkers.

This study proposes a framework to stratify vascular disease patients based on brain health and cerebrovascular disease (CVD) risk using regional FLAIR biomarkers. Intensity and texture biomarkers were extracted from FLAIR volumes of 379 atherosclerosis patients. K-Means clustering identified five homogeneous subgroups.