The "syringe" technique: a hands-free approach for the reduction of acute nontraumatic temporomandibular dislocations in the emergency department.

Background: The traditional intraoral manual reduction of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dislocations is time consuming, difficult, and at times ineffective, and commonly requires conscious sedation.

Objectives: We describe a novel technique for the reduction of acute nontraumatic TMJ dislocations in the emergency department (ED).

Methods: This study was a prospective convenience sample population during a 3-year period at two university teaching-hospital EDs where acute nontraumatic TMJ dislocations were reduced utilizing our syringe technique.

A role for polyglucans in a model sea urchin embryo cellular interaction.

The enzymatic activities of commercially prepared glycosidases were verified by direct chemical assays using defined substrates and fixed and live sea urchin (Lytechinus pictus) embryos to determine if a model cellular interaction of interest to developmental biologists for over a century (interaction of archenteron tip and roof of the blastocoel) was mediated by glycans. Glycosidases (active and denatured) were incubated with microdissected archenterons and blastocoel roofs in a direct assay to learn if their enzymatic activities could prevent the normal adhesive interaction. Of the five glycosidases tested only β-amylase (an exoglycosidase) immediately inhibited the interaction at relatively low unit activity.