Cancer Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Study From a Najran Oncology Center.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted healthcare systems globally, with cancer patients representing a particularly vulnerable group. This study aims to evaluate the influence of COVID-19 on cancer, focusing on infection rates, types of care, therapy adjustments, and factors associated with COVID-19 infection. Materials and methods This single-center retrospective analysis included adult cancer patients who underwent anticancer therapy at King Khalid Hospital in Najran, Saudi Arabia, from December 20, 2020, to January 23, 2022.

Is Urethral Catheterization Necessary in Retzius-sparing Robot-assisted Radical Prostatectomy?

Objective: To analyze whether urethral catheter (UC)-free anastomosis during Retzius-sparing radical prostatectomy (RP) results in worsening immediate perioperative and postoperative complications.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed records of patients undergoing robotic-assisted RP with or without indwelling UC placement by a single surgeon between January 2020 and March 2022. Clinical and pathological characteristics were evaluated.

The Older Adults With Rectal Cancer-Does Age Matter?: A Single-center Experience.

Objectives: Oncological treatments of older patients have many unresolved questions mainly because of the fact that these patients were not eligible to be included in most clinical trials. The aim of this study was to evaluate the treatment approach to localized rectal cancer in the older population, including complication rates and overall survival in patients treated with curative intent.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective review of patients older than 80 years old (group A) who were treated for clinical stages II to III rectal cancer.

Primary Alcohol-Activated Human and Mouse Hepatic Stellate Cells Share Similarities in Gene-Expression Profiles.

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a leading cause of cirrhosis in the United States, which is characterized by extensive deposition of extracellular matrix proteins and formation of a fibrous scar. Hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) are the major source of collagen type 1 producing myofibroblasts in ALD fibrosis. However, the mechanism of alcohol-induced activation of human and mouse HSCs is not fully understood.

Characterization of neurons in the primate medial intraparietal area reveals a joint representation of intended reach direction and amplitude.

To support accurate memory-guided reaching, the brain must represent both the direction and amplitude of reaches in a movement plan. Several cortical areas have been shown to represent the direction of a planned reaching movement, but the neuronal representation of reach amplitude is still unclear, especially in sensory-motor integration areas. To investigate this, we recorded from neurons in the medial intraparietal area (MIP) of monkeys performing a variable amplitude memory reach task.

Applying Time-sharing technique in a multimodal compact low-power CMOS neurochip for simultaneous neurochemical and action potential recording.

Brain is an electrochemical system and recent studies suggest simultaneous measurement of interrelated brain's electrical and neurochemical activity may lead to better understanding of brain function in addition to developing optimal neural prosthetics. By exploiting opamp Time-sharing technique to minimized power dissipation and silicon area, we have fabricated a power efficient implantable CMOS microsystem for simultaneous measurement of Action Potential (AP) and neurotransmitter concentration. Both AP-recording and neurotransmitter sensing subsystems share a single 653 nW amplifier which senses picoscale to microscale current that corresponds to micromolar neurotransmitter concentration and microscale AP voltage.

Modulation of neural activity by reward in medial intraparietal cortex is sensitive to temporal sequence of reward.

To restore movements to paralyzed patients, neural prosthetic systems must accurately decode patients' intentions from neural signals. Despite significant advancements, current systems are unable to restore complex movements. Decoding reward-related signals from the medial intraparietal area (MIP) could enhance prosthetic performance.

The challenge of sample-stabilisation in the era of multi-residue analytical methods: a practical guideline for the stabilisation of 46 organic micropollutants in aqueous samples.

Water sample storage and stabilisation may affect data quality, if samples are managed improperly. In this study three stabilising strategies are evaluated for 46 relevant organic micro-pollutants: addition of the biocides (i) copper sulphate and (ii) sodium azide to water samples directly after sampling with subsequent sample storage as liquid phase and (iii) direct solid phase extraction (SPE), stabilising the samples by reducing the activity of water. River water and treated effluent were chosen as commonly investigated matrices with a high potential of biotransformation activity.

Effects of TMS coil geometry on stimulation specificity.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation has become an established tool in experimental cognitive neuroscience and has more recently been applied clinically. The current spatial extent of neural activation is several millimeters but with greater specificity, transcranial magnetic stimulation can potentially deliver real time feedback to reinforce or extinguish behavior by exciting or inhibiting localized neural circuits. The specificity of transcranial magnetic stimulation is a function of the stimulation coil geometry.

A biomimetic adaptive algorithm and low-power architecture for implantable neural decoders.

Algorithmically and energetically efficient computational architectures that operate in real time are essential for clinically useful neural prosthetic devices. Such devices decode raw neural data to obtain direct control signals for external devices. They can also perform data compression and vastly reduce the bandwidth and consequently power expended in wireless transmission of raw data from implantable brain-machine interfaces.

Parietal reach region encodes reach depth using retinal disparity and vergence angle signals.

Performing a visually guided reach requires the ability to perceive the egocentric distance of a target in three-dimensional space. Previous studies have shown that the parietal reach region (PRR) encodes the two-dimensional location of frontoparallel targets in an eye-centered reference frame. To investigate how a reach target is represented in three dimensions, we recorded the spiking activity of PRR neurons from two rhesus macaques trained to fixate and perform memory reaches to targets at different depths.

Decoding trajectories from posterior parietal cortex ensembles.

High-level cognitive signals in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) have previously been used to decode the intended endpoint of a reach, providing the first evidence that PPC can be used for direct control of a neural prosthesis (Musallam et al., 2004). Here we expand on this work by showing that PPC neural activity can be harnessed to estimate not only the endpoint but also to continuously control the trajectory of an end effector.

NeuroMEMS: Neural Probe Microtechnologies.

Neural probe technologies have already had a significant positive effect on our understanding of the brain by revealing the functioning of networks of biological neurons. Probes are implanted in different areas of the brain to record and/or stimulate specific sites in the brain. Neural probes are currently used in many clinical settings for diagnosis of brain diseases such as seizers, epilepsy, migraine, Alzheimer's, and dementia.

Forward estimation of movement state in posterior parietal cortex.

During goal-directed movements, primates are able to rapidly and accurately control an online trajectory despite substantial delay times incurred in the sensorimotor control loop. To address the problem of large delays, it has been proposed that the brain uses an internal forward model of the arm to estimate current and upcoming states of a movement, which are more useful for rapid online control. To study online control mechanisms in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), we recorded from single neurons while monkeys performed a joystick task.

Levamisole Therapy as a Second-line Immunosuppressive Agent in Corticosteroid-sensitive Nephrotic Syndrome in Children.

To evaluate the effect of levamisole therapy combined with corticosteroid in children with nephrotic syndrome and frequent relapses (FR) or steroid dependence (SD), we studied retrospectively 24 children (18 boys and six girls) with a mean age of 32 months. Eleven (46%) patients had FR and 13 (54%) had SD. Levamisole was used for a mean period of 8.

Paralysis Episodes in Carbonic Anhydrase II Deficiency.

Carbonic anhydrase II (CAII) deficiency is an autosomal recessive disorder manifest by osteopetrosis, renal tubular acidosis, and cerebral calcification. Other features include growth failure and mental retardation. Complications of the osteopetrosis include frequent bone fractures, cranial nerve compression, and dental mal-occlusion.

Coarctation of the aorta: A call for early detection.

Background: Early repair of coarctation of the aorta (COA) is associated with few perioperative complications and better long-term outcome. Therefore, early detection and treatment of COA patients is extremely desirable. The aim of this study was to review our referral system, the effectiveness of neonatal screening examination, and orient physicians about this abnormality, the mode and age of presentation, differences in presentation between cases with isolated COA, and cases associated with other cardiac lesions.

A new multi-site probe array with monolithically integrated parylene flexible cable for neural prostheses.

This work presents a new multi-site probe array applied with parylene technology, used for neural prostheses to record high-level cognitive neural signals. Instead of inorganic materials (e.g.

Recording advances for neural prosthetics.

An important challenge for neural prosthetics research is to record from populations of neurons over long periods of time, ideally for the lifetime of the patient. Two new advances toward this goal are described, the use of local field potentials (LFPs) and autonomously positioned recording electrodes. LFPs are the composite extracellular potential field from several hundreds of neurons around the electrode tip.

A floating metal microelectrode array for chronic implantation.

Implantation of multi-electrode arrays is becoming increasingly more prevalent within the neuroscience research community and has become important for clinical applications. Many of these studies have been directed towards the development of sensory and motor prosthesis. Here, we present a multi-electrode system made from biocompatible material that is electrically and mechanically stable, and employs design features allowing flexibility in the geometric layout and length of the individual electrodes within the array.

Selecting the signals for a brain-machine interface.

Brain-machine interfaces are being developed to assist paralyzed patients by enabling them to operate machines with recordings of their own neural activity. Recent studies show that motor parameters, such as hand trajectory, and cognitive parameters, such as the goal and predicted value of an action, can be decoded from the recorded activity to provide control signals. Neural prosthetics that use simultaneously a variety of cognitive and motor signals can maximize the ability of patients to communicate and interact with the outside world.

Cognitive neural prosthetics.

Research on neural prosthetics has focused largely on using activity related to hand trajectories recorded from motor cortical areas. An interesting question revolves around what other signals might be read out from the brain and used for neural prosthetic applications. Recent studies indicate that goals and expected value are among the high-level cognitive signals that can be used and will potentially enhance the ability of paralyzed patients to communicate with the outside world.