Neurosurgical Oncology in Vietnam.

Background: In conjunction with Vietnam's unparalleled economic growth over the past 20 years, our scope of neurosurgical interventions has considerably diversified throughout this time period.

Methods: Although still appreciably limited, healthcare resources and infrastructure have expanded and shifted the focus within neurosurgery at Ho Chi Minh City's Cho Ray Hospital from head trauma (which remains highly prevalent) to an equal proportion of elective cases for vascular lesions, tumors, and degenerative spine disease. Arguably the most significant progress throughout the new millennium has been achieved in the realm of neurosurgical oncology.

Upstream discussion provided in the ambulatory setting to assist patients with chronic kidney disease considering dialysis.

Objectives: Extensive discussion with renal patients about treatment intensity is not systematically integrated into their care and often occurs during an acute hospitalization. We conducted a "test-of-change" pilot study to assess the utility of providing an upstream discussion in the ambulatory setting as an additional nephrology consult to assist patients with chronic kidney disease considering treatment choices.

Methods: We randomly assigned patients with Stage 4 or Stage 5 chronic kidney disease who had not yet begun renal dialysis to 1 of 2 groups.

Non-intertwined binary patterns of hydrophobic/nonhydrophobic amino acids are considerably better markers of regular secondary structures than nonconstrained patterns.

Patterns of hydrophobic and hydrophilic residues (binary patterns) play an important role in protein architecture and can be roughly categorized into two classes regarding their preferential participation in alpha-helices or beta-strands. However, a single binary pattern can be embedded into different longer patterns carrying opposite structural information and thus cannot be as much informative as expected. Here, we consider conditional binary patterns, or hydrophobic clusters, whose existence is conditioned by the presence of a minimum number of nonhydrophobic residues, called the connectivity distance, that separate two hydrophobic amino acids assumed to belong to two distinct patterns.