Publications by authors named "Phillip Croce"
Background: Gallbladder volvulus is a rare pathology first reported by Wendel in 1898. Although the main pathological process associated with gallbladder volvulus is not known, there is clinical evidence suggesting that lack of gallbladder adhesions to the liver leads to an eventual twisting around the cystic bile duct (a process that seems to favor older female populations).
Case Presentation: In this report, an 81-year-old Caucasian elderly female presented to the emergency department with acute/severe right upper quadrant pain, which was also accompanied by an elevated leukocyte count.
Article Synopsis
- There is a growing demand for region-specific, noninvasive treatments for neurologic and psychiatric disorders, with transcranial focused ultrasound technology emerging as a promising option.
- This technology can temporarily and reversibly disrupt the blood-brain barrier with high precision, allowing for the delivery of therapeutic agents directly into the brain.
- Ongoing research is expanding from small animals to nonhuman primates and humans, focusing on the technique's efficacy, safety, and potential for clinical application in treating various neurologic conditions.
Article Synopsis
- * The study focused on the effects of FUS on brain excitability in sheep, testing different sonication parameters on the primary sensorimotor area and thalamus.
- * Results indicated that FUS can transiently and safely modulate brain activity without causing tissue damage, supporting further human research.
Article Synopsis
- Researchers have developed a non-invasive technique using focused ultrasound (FUS) and microbubble agents to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in sheep brains for potential medical applications.
- Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI confirmed the localized opening of the BBB, with specific acoustic pressures affecting permeability; lower pressure (0.48 MPa) was effective, while higher pressure (0.58 MPa) caused minor hemorrhage.
- The study found no abnormal behavior in animals during the two-month recovery period, suggesting that careful monitoring is necessary to ensure safety when applying this method to humans.
Article Synopsis
- Low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) offers a new, non-invasive way to stimulate the brain with high precision and depth, making it important to study its effects on awake animals rather than relying solely on anesthesia, which can skew results.
- Researchers created a small tFUS device that can be attached to rats' skulls, allowing for brain stimulation while the animals are alert and moving freely, which revealed a more robust response in their physical movements compared to when they were anesthetized.
- Overall, this study demonstrates that using awake models for tFUS research could lead to more accurate insights into the effects of brain stimulation, as it reduced variability in responses while maintaining the safety of the animals.
Article Synopsis
- Low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound (FUS) is a non-invasive technique that can stimulate deep brain areas with high precision.
- Previous studies had focused on the short-term effects of FUS, but this research investigated whether FUS can have lasting effects that last for 30 minutes or more.
- The findings showed that FUS applied to rats led to long-lasting changes in brain activity, suggesting that this method might be capable of inducing neuroplasticity.
Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) is emerging as a non-invasive brain stimulation modality. Complicated interactions between acoustic pressure waves and osseous tissue introduce many challenges in the accurate targeting of an acoustic focus through the cranium. Image-guidance accompanied by a numerical simulation is desired to predict the intracranial acoustic propagation through the skull; however, such simulations typically demand heavy computation, which warrants an expedited processing method to provide on-site feedback for the user in guiding the acoustic focus to a particular brain region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study reports a three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technique that is capable of producing a full-thickness skin model containing pigmentation. Multiple layers of fibroblast (FB)-containing collagen hydrogel precursor were printed and crosslinked through neutralization using sodium bicarbonate, constituting the dermal layer. Melanocytes (MCs) and keratinocytes (KCs) were sequentially printed on top of the dermal layer to induce skin pigmentation upon subsequent air-liquid interface culture.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examined the effects of pulsed focused ultrasound (FUS) in disrupting nerve conduction. FUS operating at a 210 kHz fundamental frequency was administered to the medial and lateral giant axonal nerve fibers of earthworms in a burst of pulses (1 ms tone burst duration, 20 Hz pulse repetition frequency). The magnitude and latencies of the nerve potentials induced by electrical stimulation were measured under three experimental conditions - (I) no sonication, (II) sonication at 600 mW/cm spatial-peak temporal-average intensity (Ispta), and (III) sonication at 200 mW/cm Ispta.
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