Prospective 5-year follow-up of L5-S1 versus L4-5 midline decompression and interspinous-interlaminar fixation as a stand-alone treatment for spinal stenosis compared with laminectomies.

Background: Spinal stenosis treatment includes laminectomies with or without fusion or with interspinous distraction with or without fixation. Lack of published data on interspinous fixation devices (IFD) at L5-S1 is less considered as an option due to the smaller anatomical S1 spinous process and the higher stresses from the immobile sacrum. Our objective was to evaluate the outcomes of an IFD used as a stand-alone treatment for spinal stenosis at L5-S1 and L4-5 compared to historical data on open laminectomies.

Diquat Herbicide Organophosphate Poisoning and Multi-Organ Failure: A Case Report.

A 63-year-old male landscaper presented to our emergency department (ED) following unintentional ingestion of an herbicide including diquat, a highly lethal toxin. Poison control was consulted, and treatment was centered around emergency hemodialysis to mitigate the nephrotoxic effects of diquat. Unfortunately, our patient did not survive.

Anomaly detection in microservice environments using distributed tracing data analysis and NLP.

In recent years DevOps and agile approaches like microservice architectures and Continuous Integration have become extremely popular given the increasing need for flexible and scalable solutions. However, several factors such as their distribution in the network, the use of different technologies, their short life, etc. make microservices prone to the occurrence of anomalous system behaviours.

Uncertainty of Liver Cirrhosis Diagnosis and Use of Elastography.

A case of severe jaundice in a patient with a long history of alcohol abuse led to a questionable diagnosis of liver cirrhosis. To determine its diagnostic utility in the setting of liver disease, elastography was utilized on our patient to confirm the clinically suspected diagnosis of cirrhosis. A 59-year-old male presented to our emergency department (ED) with two days of progressive jaundice and right upper quadrant (RUQ) pain.

Effectiveness of a Fully Impregnated Hydroxyapatite Polyetheretherketone Cage on Fusion in Anterior Cervical Spine Surgery.

Introduction Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) is the gold standard for the treatment of cervical spondylosis. However, new techniques, technologies, and improved implants have aided surgeons in reducing operative time with enhanced patient outcomes. Impregnated hydroxyapatite polyetheretherketone (HA PEEK) cages (Arena-C HA®, LESspine Inc.

A Framework for Detecting System Performance Anomalies Using Tracing Data Analysis.

Advances in technology and computing power have led to the emergence of complex and large-scale software architectures in recent years. However, they are prone to performance anomalies due to various reasons, including software bugs, hardware failures, and resource contentions. Performance metrics represent the average load on the system and do not help discover the cause of the problem if abnormal behavior occurs during software execution.

Column generation algorithms for exact modularity maximization in networks.

Finding modules, or clusters, in networks currently attracts much attention in several domains. The most studied criterion for doing so, due to Newman and Girvan [Phys. Rev.