Further development of spinal cord retreatment dose estimation: including radiotherapy with protons and light ions.

Purpose: A graphical user interface (GUI) was developed to aid in the assessment of changes in the radiation tolerance of spinal cord/similar central nervous system tissues with time between two individual treatment courses.

Methods: The GUI allows any combination of photons, protons (or ions) to be used as the initial, or retreatment, radiotherapy courses. Allowances for clinical circumstances, of reduced tolerance, can also be made.

Covid-19 transmission modelling of students returning home from university.

We provide an open-source model to estimate the number of secondary Covid-19 infections caused by potentially infectious students returning from university to private homes with other occupants. Using a Monte-Carlo method and data derived from UK sources, we predict that an infectious student would, on average, infect 0.94 other household members.

Percutaneous Tracheostomy under Bronchoscopic Visualization Does Not Affect Short-Term or Long-Term Complications.

Percutaneous tracheostomy is a safe and effective bedside procedure. Some advocate the use of bronchoscopy during the procedure to reduce the rate of complications. We evaluated our complication rate in trauma patients undergoing percutaneous tracheostomy with and without bronchoscopic guidance to ascertain if there was a difference in the rate of complications.

Time to resuscitate a sacred cow...with normal saline.

Normal saline (NS) is not used for trauma resuscitation because of its potential for acidosis. Lactated Ringer's (LR) is preferred instead. However, the two crystalloids have never been compared in trauma patients.