[Beating heart surgical treatment of atrio-esophageal fistula after radiofrequency ablation of atrial fibrillation].

Atrio-esophageal fistula (AEF) is a rare (0.02-0.1%) complication of radiofrequency ablation for atrial fibrillation and is associated with high mortality.

Double-Barrel Technique With Reversed Gore Excluder Stent Graft Limb for Common Iliac Aneurysm Exclusion in a Patient With Prior Aortic Surgical Repair.

Surgical repair of a common iliac artery aneurysm (CIA) after previous open aortic reconstruction is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Endovascular repair is considered less invasive than surgery. However, if preservation of the internal iliac artery (IIA) is required, the applicability of endovascular techniques may represent a challenge and a limitation to the use of standard aortic endografts or iliac branch devices.

[The prescription: messenger between the person, the doctor's office, the nursing and pharmacy teams].

Interprofessional collaboration is essential to enhance quality of care and patient safety. It is clearly defined and requires the following 6 competencies: role clarification, teamwork, interprofessional conflict resolution, collaborative leadership, interprofessional communication and patient/client/family/community-centered care. Through different variations of a clinical scenario in primary care, we propose to demonstrate the importance of putting these skills into practice and to analyze the opportunities to reflect on the different types of interprofessional interactions depending on the complexity of the situation.

MALT Lymphoma Presenting with Peripheral Ulcerative Keratitis.

Objective: To report a case of ocular mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma presenting with peripheral ulcerative keratitis.

Methods: A 58-year-old man with a history of vitreous syneresis in both eyes and glaucoma presented with an abnormal, painful sensation of the left eye and mild hyperemia. Physical examination revealed peripheral ulcerative keratitis superiorly and a salmon-colored lesion in the superior conjunctiva.

Covid-19 vaccination and possible link to Herpes zoster.

Purpose: To report 3 otherwise healthy patients with Herpes zoster reactivation shortly after administration of a mRNA vaccine against the novel COVID-19 virus.

Observations: Patient 1 is a 54 year old who presented with Herpes zoster meningitis complicated by enhancing nodular leptomeningeal lesions of the spinal cord. The subsequent two patients had Herpes zoster ophthalmicus of the cornea (Case 2) and eyelid (Case 3).

Postangioplasty aneurysm of right coronary artery.

Background: Coronary artery aneurysms are an uncommon disease whose incidence ranges from 0.3% to 5.3%.

Pericardiectomy for constrictive pericarditis.

Chronic constrictive pericarditis results from inflammation and fibrosis of the pericardium. This situation eventually leads to impairment of diastolic filling and right heart failure. Once the diagnosis is made, because the disease is basically irreversible, a pericardiectomy is the mandatory treatment.

POSITION OF IN-THE-BAG POSTERIOR CHAMBER INTRAOCULAR LENSES RELATIVE TO THE LIMBUS: Applications to Scleral-Sutured Lenses.

Purpose: To characterize the true position of in-the-bag intraocular lenses (IOLs) relative to the limbus using ultrasound biomicroscopy and estimate scleral-sutured IOL positioning.

Methods: This prospective single-center study included 70 eyes of 41 patients with in-the-bag posterior chamber IOLs. Four vertical ultrasound biomicroscopy captures were performed in each eye in the superior, inferior, nasal, and temporal quadrants.

Pseudopemphigoid: Sarcoidosis presenting as cicatricial conjunctivitis with symblepharon.

Conjunctival involvement in sarcoidosis is commonly characterized by epibulbar nodules or follicular conjunctivitis. The authors describe an apparently healthy woman who developed extensive monocular cicatricial conjunctivitis with symblepharon. The array of conditions presenting with cicatricial conjunctivitis was considered, with mucous membrane pemphigoid leading the diagnostic possibilities.

An adult with COVID-19 kawasaki-like syndrome and ocular manifestations.

Purpose: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 and its associated infection known as COVID-19 have resulted in a global pandemic. Ocular manifestations of COVID-19 are nonspecific and include hyperemia, chemosis, epiphora, secretions, and eyelid edema. There is a paucity in the literature regarding COVID-19 related inflammatory syndromes which may also include ocular manifestations.

Dupilumab-Associated Blepharoconjunctivitis with Giant Papillae.

Purpose: To describe a case of severe dupilumab-associated blepharoconjunctivitis with giant papillae treated with high potency corticosteroid eyedrops, without discontinuing or reducing dupilumab therapy.

Case Report: A 22-year-old Latin American female with a long history of severe atopic dermatitis (AD) with no ocular involvement presented 20 weeks after starting treatment with dupilumab injections with blurry vision, multiple chalazia, eyelid swelling and severe conjunctival injection in both eyes. She also reports having a hordeolum 2 months prior and severely dry eyes starting 2 weeks prior.

A Robust Group-Sparse Representation Variational Method with applications to Face Recognition.

In this paper we propose a Group-Sparse Representation based method with applications to Face Recognition (GSR-FR). The novel sparse representation variational model includes a non-convex sparsity-inducing penalty and a robust non-convex loss function. The penalty encourages group sparsity by using approximation of the ℓ0-quasinorm, and the loss function is chosen to make the algorithm robust to noise, occlusions and disguises.

A case of hypertrophic herpes simplex virus affecting the eyelid and cornea masquerading as IgG4-related disease.

Purpose: To report a case of hypertrophic herpes simplex virus (HSV) of the eyelid and cornea masquerading as IgG4-related disease.

Observations: A 37-year old African American female with a past medical history of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and a recent history of treated genital herpes, presented with an ulcerative lesion of the left upper and lower eyelids, and severe ocular inflammation with symblepharon. Initially, eyelid biopsy revealed findings consistent with IgG4-related disease, and the patient was treated with high dose oral prednisone.

Image enhancement variational methods for enabling strong cost reduction in OLED-based point-of-care immunofluorescent diagnostic systems.

Immunofluorescence diagnostic systems cost is often dominated by high-sensitivity, low-noise CCD-based cameras that are used to acquire the fluorescence images. In this paper, we investigate the use of low-cost CMOS sensors in a point-of-care immunofluorescence diagnostic application for the detection and discrimination of 4 different serotypes of the Dengue virus in a set of human samples. A 2-phase postprocessing software pipeline is proposed, which consists in a first image-enhancement stage for resolution increasing and segmentation and a second diagnosis stage for the computation of the output concentrations.

Gout Keratitis: A Case of Peripheral Ulcerative Keratitis Secondary to Gout With a Review of the Literature.

Purpose: To report a case of peripheral ulcerative keratitis secondary to gout.

Methods: A 41-year-old man with a history of severe gout disease presented with pain and redness of the right eye. Physical examination revealed 2 areas of peripheral corneal thinning with overlying epithelial defects.

Human retinal endothelial cells and astrocytes cultured on 3-D scaffolds for ocular drug discovery and development.

Topical ocular ketorolac improves the outcomes of severe retinopathy of prematurity and when administered with systemic caffeine, decreases the severity of oxygen-induced retinopathy. We tested the hypothesis that co-cultures of human retinal endothelial cells (HRECs) and human retinal astrocytes (HRAs) on 3-dimensional (3-D) hydrogel scaffolds is a more representative biomimetic paradigm of the blood-retinal-barrier (BRB) than 2-D cultures, and should be utilized for preclinical drug discovery and development. Mono- and co-cultures of HRECs and HRAs were treated with standard doses of ketorolac, ibuprofen, and/or caffeine, and exposed to hyperoxia, intermittent hypoxia (IH), or normoxia on 2-D surfaces or 3-D biodegradable hydrogel scaffolds (AlgiMatrix or Geltrex).

Ocular Adverse Effects of Intravitreal Bevacizumab Are Potentiated by Intermittent Hypoxia in a Rat Model of Oxygen-Induced Retinopathy.

Intravitreal bevacizumab (Avastin) use in preterm infants with retinopathy of prematurity is associated with severe neurological disabilities, suggesting vascular leakage. We examined the hypothesis that intermittent hypoxia (IH) potentiates intravitreal Avastin leakage. Neonatal rats at birth were exposed to IH from birth (P0)-P14.

Descemet's Membrane Dehiscence Resulting From Misdirected Viscoelastic During Anterior Chamber Reformation.

We report a case of Descemet's membrane detachment after inadvertent intrastromal injection of hyaluronic acid. Surgical removal was attempted with minimal but slow improvement. Near-complete resolution occurred with subsequent conservative management within 6 weeks.

CT angio for the evaluation of graft patency.

Invasive coronary angiography (ICA) is the traditional method for the follow-up of graft patency in coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients. Nevertheless, the advent of multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) opened new perspectives for using a noninvasive, equally reliable method to study CABG patients. This review article will analyze the current feasibility of modern multi-slice MDCT, as well as its future perspectives.

Interplay between CCN1 and Wnt5a in endothelial cells and pericytes determines the angiogenic outcome in a model of ischemic retinopathy.

CYR61-CTGF-NOV (CCN)1 is a dynamically expressed extracellular matrix (ECM) protein with critical functions in cardiovascular development and tissue repair. Angiogenic endothelial cells (ECs) are a major cellular source of CCN1 which, once secreted, associates with the ECM and the cell surface and tightly controls the bidirectional flow of information between cells and the surrounding matrix. Endothelium-specific CCN1 deletion in mice using a cre/lox strategy induces EC hyperplasia and causes blood vessels to coalesce into large flat hyperplastic sinuses with no distinctive hierarchical organization.

Neonatal Intermittent Hypoxia, Reactive Oxygen Species, and Oxygen-Induced Retinopathy.

Most of the major morbidities in the preterm newborn are caused by or are associated with oxygen-induced injuries and are aptly called "oxygen radical diseases in neonatology or ORDIN". These include bronchopulmonary dysplasia, retinopathy of prematurity, periventricular leukomalacia, intraventricular hemorrhage, necrotizing enterocolitis and others. Relative hyperoxia immediately after birth, immature antioxidant systems, biomolecular events favoring oxidative stress such as iron availability and the role of hydrogen peroxide as a key molecular mediator of these events are reviewed.

Carotid Bypass Using Gore Hybrid Vascular Graft for In-stent Restenosis after Carotid Stenting.

In-stent restenosis (ISR) is the most common long-term complication following carotid artery stenting (CAS), affecting 3.5% to 21% of patients after a mean follow-up of 18 months in published reports. Until now, the optimal management for ISR after CAS is still not clear, and different endovascular treatments along with various surgical options have been proposed.

Evaluation of the Effect of Cycloplegia on Anterior Chamber Depth in Cataract Patients Using Optical Low-Coherence Reflectometry.

Purpose: The study was performed to study the effect of cycloplegia on anterior chamber depth (ACD) in cataract eyes. One instrument (Lenstar) was used for all measurements.

Methods: Anterior chamber depth calculations were taken with the Lenstar in cataract eyes with a mean age of 71.