Effects of preemptive cerebrospinal fluid drainage on spinal cord protection during thoracic endovascular aortic repair.

Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is reported to occur in 3-12% of thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) cases, but is a potentially preventable complication of TEVAR for thoracoabdominal pathologies. Although many strategies have been devised to reduce the incidence of SCI, the effectiveness of prophylactic cerebrospinal fluid drainage (CSFD) and left subclavian artery (LSA) revascularization remains controversial.

Methods: From 2012 to 2014, 162 patients underwent TEVAR at a single institution.

MicroRNA-17-mediated down-regulation of apoptotic protease activating factor 1 attenuates apoptosome formation and subsequent apoptosis of cardiomyocytes.

Heart diseases such as myocardial infarction (MI) can damage individual cardiomyocytes, leading to the activation of cell death programs. The most scrutinized type of cell death in the heart is apoptosis, and one of the key events during the propagation of apoptotic signaling is the formation of apoptosomes, which relay apoptotic signals by activating caspase-9. As one of the major components of apoptosomes, apoptotic protease activating factor 1 (Apaf-1) facilitates the formation of apoptosomes containing cytochrome c (Cyto-c) and deoxyadenosine triphosphate (dATP).

Preoperative coronary angiography within one day of valve surgery is not associated with postoperative acute kidney injury in patients with preserved renal function.

Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common complication after cardiac surgery. Associations between the time interval (TI) from preoperative coronary angiography (CAG) to cardiac surgery have been investigated, although with conflicting results.

Methods: We evaluated data collected from a retrospective review of consecutive patients who underwent preoperative CAG and heart valve surgery at our institution between September 2008 and February 2013.

An implementation of sensor-based force feedback in a compact laparoscopic surgery robot.

Despite the rapid progress in the clinical application of laparoscopic surgery robots, many shortcomings have not yet been fully overcome, one of which is the lack of reliable haptic feedback. This study implemented a force-feedback structure in our compact laparoscopic surgery robot. The surgery robot is a master-slave configuration robot with 5 DOF (degree of freedom corresponding laparoscopic surgical motion.