Procalcitonin as an early predictive marker for infectious complications after hepatectomy.

Introduction: The present study aimed to determine the clinical value of serum procalcitonin (PCT) level in predicting postoperative infections after hepatectomy.

Methods: Medical records of 301 consecutive patients who underwent hepatectomy were retrospectively reviewed. We divided the patients into infection-positive and infection-negative groups.

Acoustic radiation force impulse (push pulse)-induced lung hemorrhage: investigating the effect of ultrasound contrast agent in rabbits.

Purpose: Acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) elastography and contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) are emerging techniques that are becoming common in ultrasound examinations. We previously reported that ARFI (push pulse) induced lung hemorrhage in rabbits, indicating that greater risks are associated with ARFI than with conventional ultrasound. In this study, we assessed the risk of lung hemorrhage under a combination of ARFI elastography and CEUS, considering potential exacerbation of ARFI-induced lung hemorrhage as a result of the ultrasound contrast agent (UCA) used in CEUS.

Clinical impact of the prognostic nutritional index and skeletal muscle index for the incompletion of adjuvant chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer.

Background: Adjuvant chemotherapy is a standard therapeutic option for resected pancreatic cancer. However, the risk factors for incompletion of adjuvant chemotherapy remain unclear.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 72 patients who underwent radical pancreatectomy and received S-1 adjuvant chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer.

A novel tauopathy model mimicking molecular and spatial aspects of human tau pathology.

Creating a mouse model that recapitulates human tau pathology is essential for developing strategies to intervene in tau-induced neurodegeneration. However, mimicking the pathological features seen in human pathology often involves a trade-off with artificial effects such as unexpected gene insertion and neurotoxicity from the expression system. To overcome these issues, we developed the rTKhomo mouse model by combining a transgenic CaMKII-tTA system with a P301L mutated 1N4R human tau knock-in at the locus with a C57BL/6J background.