Anaesth Rep
November 2024
The number of people identifying as transgender and/or gender diverse has increased significantly in recent years. As there are no pharmacologic options for raising vocal pitch and voice therapy may have limited benefit, vocal feminisation surgery is important for this group of patients. It is important for clinicians to be aware of the procedures which may be carried out and the implications for subsequent airway management.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis review describes mechanisms for pulling fluids through microfluidic devices using hydrophilic structures at the downstream end of the device. These pumps enable microfluidic devices to get out of the lab and become point-of-care devices that can be used without external pumps. We briefly summarize prior related reviews on capillary, pumpless, and passively driven microfluidics then provide insights into the fundamental physics of wicking pumps.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: To co-create parental presence practice recommendations across Canadian NICUs during pandemics caused by respiratory pathogens such as COVID-19.
Methods: Recommendations were developed through evidence, context, Delphi and Values and Preferences methods. For Delphi 1 and 2, participants rated 50 items and 20 items respectively on a scale from 1 (very low importance) to 5 (very high).
Biomechanical attributes have emerged as novel markers, providing a reliable means to characterize cellular and subcellular fractions. Numerous studies have identified correlations between these factors and patients' medical status. However, the absence of a thorough overview impedes their applicability in contemporary state-of-the-art therapeutic strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnumeration and phenotypic profiling of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) provide critical information for clinical diagnosis and treatment monitoring in cancer. To achieve this goal, an integrated system is needed to efficiently isolate CTCs from patient samples and sensitively evaluate their phenotypes. Such integration would comprise a high-throughput single-cell processing unit for the isolation and manipulation of CTCs and a sensitive and multiplexed quantitation unit to detect clinically relevant signals from these cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMounting evidence suggests that cell populations are extremely heterogeneous, with individual cells fulfilling different roles within the population. Flow cytometry (FC) is a high-throughput tool for single-cell analysis that works at high optical resolution. Sub-populations with unique properties can be screened, isolated and sorted through fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), using intracellular fluorescent products or surface-tagged fluorescent products of interest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObtaining an enriched and phenotypically pure cell population from heterogeneous cell mixtures is important for diagnostics and biosensing. Existing techniques such as fluorescent-activated cell sorting (FACS) and magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS) require preincubation with antibodies (Ab) and specialized equipment. Cell immunopanning removes the need for preincubation and can be done with no specialized equipment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFErving Goffman's status as a great social scientist today seems relatively secure. Many commentators highlight his extraordinary capacities to pinpoint the fine-grained details of human behavior in the "interaction order". But if Goffman's brilliance in this respect was deeply rooted in his various and interlocking personal, existential, social, and intellectual idiosyncrasies, and his intellectual practice is inimitable, the degree to which anyone else could, or should try to, imitate Goffman's intellectual practice today, remains an open question.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the past two decades, inertial microfluidics, which works at an intermediate range of (∼1 < < ∼100), has been widely used for particle separation due to its high-throughput and label-free features. This work proposes a novel method for continuous separation of particles by size using inertial microfluidics, with the assistance of symmetrical sheath flows in a straight microchannel. Here, larger particles (>3 μm) are arranged close to the channel sidewalls, while smaller particles (<2 μm) remain flowing along the channel centerline.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis commentary reflects on the strengths of the paper by Warde et al. entitled "Situated drinking: the association between eating and alcohol consumption in Great Britain". It suggests that practice-theoretical approaches towards studying contemporary connections between foods, food events and alcoholic drinks provides an excellent basis for overcoming the analytical limits of fields such as food studies, drinks studies, alcohol studies and related areas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBlood testing allows for diagnosis and monitoring of numerous conditions and illnesses; it forms an essential pillar of the health industry that continues to grow in market value. Due to the complex physical and biological nature of blood, samples must be carefully collected and prepared to obtain accurate and reliable analysis results with minimal background signal. Examples of common sample preparation steps include dilutions, plasma separation, cell lysis, and nucleic acid extraction and isolation, which are time-consuming and can introduce risks of sample cross-contamination or pathogen exposure to laboratory staff.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeterministic lateral displacement (DLD) is a passive separation method that separates particles by hydrodynamic size. This label-free method is a promising technique for cell separation because of its high size resolution and insensitivity to flow rate. Development of capillary-driven microfluidic technologies allows microfluidic devices to be operated without any external power for fluid pumping, lowering their total cost and complexity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHere, we achieve the separation and enrichment of clusters from its singlets in a viscoelastic microfluidic device. , an important prokaryotic model organism and a widely used microbial factory, can aggregate in clusters, leading to biofilm development that can be detrimental to human health and industrial processes. The ability to obtain high-purity populations of clusters is of significance for biological, biomedical, and industrial applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWater-in-oil-in-water (w/o/w) or double-emulsion (DE) droplets have been widely used for cellular assays at a single-cell level because of their stability and biocompatibility. The oil shell of w/o/w droplets plays the role of a semipermeable membrane that allows substances with low molecular weight (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBioengineering (Basel)
September 2022
Current protocols using liquid disinfectants to disinfect heat-sensitive hospital items frequently fail, as evidenced by the continued isolation of bacteria following decontamination. The contamination is, in part, due to biofilm formation. We hypothesize that mild positive pressure (PP) will disrupt this biofilm structure and improve liquid disinfectant/detergent penetration to biofilm bacteria for improved killing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of this research was to explore parental perspectives on the impact of parent restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic across Canadian Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs). A co-designed online survey was conducted targeting parents ( = 235) of infants admitted to a Canadian NICU from March 1, 2020, until March 5, 2021. Parents completed the survey from 38 Canadian NICUs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeterministic lateral displacement (DLD) is a hydrodynamic method known for its high-resolution sorting of particles. It achieves this through a periodic array of obstacles and laminar flow that passively directs particles along in two different directions depending on the particles' diameter. Many prior publications have been dedicated to the structural and geometrical development of DLD arrays to improve separation performance; however, a successful separation requires much more than a well-designed array.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHere, we achieve shape-based separation of drug-treated () by viscoelastic microfluidics. Since shape is critical for modulating biological functions of , the ability to prepare homogeneous populations adopting uniform shape or sort bacterial sub-population based on their shape has significant implications for a broad range of biological, biomedical and environmental applications. A proportion of treated with 1 μg mL of the antibiotic mecillinam were found to exhibit changes in shape from rod to sphere, and the heterogeneous populations after drug treatment with various aspect ratios (ARs) ranging from 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Europe and North America are in the grips of a devastating overdose crisis. People who use substances often feel unsafe to access healthcare due to fears of stigma, blame, judgement, poor treatment, or other repercussions. As a result, they often avoid, delay, or leave care, resulting in premature death and missed opportunities for care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To explore parental perspectives on the use of technology in neonatal intensive care units (NICU), and its impact during COVID-19 parental presence restrictions.
Methods: Co-designed online survey targeting parents of infants admitted to a Canadian NICU from March 1st, 2020 until March 5th, 2021.
Results: Parents (n = 117) completed the survey from 38 NICUs.
Background: The normal interrelationship of body composition with bone health is less clear in the context of disease. Survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) exhibit sarcopenic obesity and osteopenia. The impact of body composition on bone health in such survivors was examined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLancet Gastroenterol Hepatol
February 2022
Objectives: To conduct a needs assessment with families and their healthcare team to understand the impact of restrictive family presence policies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in response to COVID-19.
Background: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, significant restrictive family presence policies were instituted in most NICUs globally intended to protect infants, families, and HCPs. However, knowledge on the impact of the stress of the pandemic and policies restricting family presence in the NICU on vulnerable neonates and their families remains limited.