Use of Diced Cartilage for Management of Internal Mammary Vessel Exposure Sites in Autologous Breast Reconstruction.

Background: Exposure of internal mammary vessels in autologous breast reconstruction often requires removal of a rib cartilage segment, which can lead to breast contour deformity. This study evaluated the use of diced cartilage (DC) to counteract substance loss in the microvascular anastomosis area.

Methods: This retrospective, single-center cohort study included all breast reconstructions in which DC was used from October 2021 to June 2023.

Limitations of Patient-Controlled Epidural Analgesia Following Abdominoplasty.

Background: Effective postoperative pain management is essential for patient satisfaction and an uneventful postoperative course, particularly in body contouring procedures. Systemic analgesic regimens can be supported by regional procedures, such as the transverse abdominis plane (TAP) block, but these have a limited duration of action. In contrast, thoracic epidural analgesia offers the possibility of a longer-lasting, individualized regional anesthesia administered by a patient-controlled analgesia pump.

The Sequence Read Archive: a decade more of explosive growth.

The Sequence Read Archive (SRA, https://www.ncbi.nlm.

STAT: a fast, scalable, MinHash-based k-mer tool to assess Sequence Read Archive next-generation sequence submissions.

Sequence Read Archive submissions to the National Center for Biotechnology Information often lack useful metadata, which limits the utility of these submissions. We describe the Sequence Taxonomic Analysis Tool (STAT), a scalable k-mer-based tool for fast assessment of taxonomic diversity intrinsic to submissions, independent of metadata. We show that our MinHash-based k-mer tool is accurate and scalable, offering reliable criteria for efficient selection of data for further analysis by the scientific community, at once validating submissions while also augmenting sample metadata with reliable, searchable, taxonomic terms.

Less Is More? Impact of Single Venous Anastomosis on the Intrinsic Transit Time of Free Flaps.

 The number of venous anastomoses advisable for a free flap continues to be controversial. Intrinsic transit time (ITT) is the time it takes dye during indocyanine green (ICG) microangiography to travel from the arterial to the venous anastomosis. ITT provides information on blood flow velocity and can predict postoperative circulatory complications.