Minimally Invasive Extirpation of Benign Atrial Cardiac Tumors: Clinical Follow-Up and Survival.

Objective: Evidence determining the optimal treatment for cardiac tumors is rare. We report our midterm clinical outcome and patient characteristics of our series undergoing atrial tumor removal through a right lateral minithoracotomy (RLMT).

Methods: From 2015 to 2021, 51 patients underwent RLMT for atrial tumor extirpation.

Executive summary of the KDIGO 2022 Clinical Practice Guideline for Diabetes Management in Chronic Kidney Disease: an update based on rapidly emerging new evidence.

The Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) 2022 Clinical Practice Guideline for Diabetes Management in Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) represents a focused update of the KDIGO 2020 guideline on the topic. The guideline targets a broad audience of clinicians treating people with diabetes and CKD. Topic areas for which recommendations are updated based on new evidence include Chapter 1: Comprehensive care in patients with diabetes and CKD and Chapter 4: Glucose-lowering therapies in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and CKD.

Clinical, social, and policy factors in COVID-19 cases and deaths: methodological considerations for feature selection and modeling in county-level analyses.

Background: There is a need to evaluate how the choice of time interval contributes to the lack of consistency of SDoH variables that appear as important to COVID-19 disease burden within an analysis for both case counts and death counts.

Methods: This study identified SDoH variables associated with U.S county-level COVID-19 cumulative case and death incidence for six different periods: the first 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 days since each county had COVID-19 one case per 10,000 residents.

Clinical-Scale Production of Nearly Pure (>98.5%) Parahydrogen and Quantification by Benchtop NMR Spectroscopy.

Because of the extensive chemical, physical, and biomedical applications of parahydrogen, the need exists for the development of highly enriched parahydrogen in a robust and efficient manner. Herein, we present a parahydrogen enrichment equipment which substantially improves upon the previous generators with its ability to enrich parahydrogen to >98.5% and a production rate of up to 4 standard liters per minute with the added advantage of real-time quantification.

Diabetes Management in Chronic Kidney Disease: Synopsis of the 2020 KDIGO Clinical Practice Guideline.

Description: The Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) organization developed a clinical practice guideline in 2020 for the management of patients with diabetes and chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Methods: The KDIGO Work Group (WG) was tasked with developing the guideline for diabetes management in CKD. It defined the scope of the guideline, gathered evidence, determined systematic review topics, and graded evidence that had been summarized by an evidence review team.

Design of a navigational catheter system for the targeted delivery of therapeutics within the suprachoroidal space.

Diseases of the posterior segment of the eye are common causes of blindness and can be difficult to treat due to their location. Recently, there has been increased interest in the use of the suprachoroidal space to deliver therapeutics to the posterior segment. This space is accessible through a trans-scleral approach and blunt dissection of the adjacent scleral and choroidal tissues.

Perspectives on Bioengineering Clinical Immersion: History, Innovation, and Impact.

Opportunities to provide clinical immersion experiences to bioengineering undergraduate students have expanded over the last several years. These programs allow students to observe the clinical environment in order to better understand workflow processes, the context in which medical equipment is used, and identify unmet needs firsthand. While each program focuses on identifying unmet needs, these experiences vary in content and implementation.

A pulse programmable parahydrogen polarizer using a tunable electromagnet and dual channel NMR spectrometer.

Applications of parahydrogen induced polarization (PHIP) often warrant conversion of the chemically-synthesized singlet-state spin order into net heteronuclear magnetization. In order to obtain optimal yields from the overall hyperpolarization process, catalytic hydrogenation must be tightly synchronized to subsequent radiofrequency (RF) transformations of spin order. Commercial NMR consoles are designed to synchronize applied waves on multiple channels and consequently are well-suited as controllers for these types of hyperpolarization experiments that require tight coordination of RF and non-RF events.

Erratum to: Open-source, small-animal magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound system.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s40349-016-0066-7.].

Open-source, small-animal magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound system.

Background: MR-guided focused ultrasound or high-intensity focused ultrasound (MRgFUS/MRgHIFU) is a non-invasive therapeutic modality with many potential applications in areas such as cancer therapy, drug delivery, and blood-brain barrier opening. However, the large financial costs involved in developing preclinical MRgFUS systems represent a barrier to research groups interested in developing new techniques and applications. We aim to mitigate these challenges by detailing a validated, open-source preclinical MRgFUS system capable of delivering thermal and mechanical FUS in a quantifiable and repeatable manner under real-time MRI guidance.

Open-Source Automated Parahydrogen Hyperpolarizer for Molecular Imaging Using (13)C Metabolic Contrast Agents.

An open-source hyperpolarizer producing (13)C hyperpolarized contrast agents using parahydrogen induced polarization (PHIP) for biomedical and other applications is presented. This PHIP hyperpolarizer utilizes an Arduino microcontroller in conjunction with a readily modified graphical user interface written in the open-source processing software environment to completely control the PHIP hyperpolarization process including remotely triggering an NMR spectrometer for efficient production of payloads of hyperpolarized contrast agent and in situ quality assurance of the produced hyperpolarization. Key advantages of this hyperpolarizer include: (i) use of open-source software and hardware seamlessly allowing for replication and further improvement as well as readily customizable integration with other NMR spectrometers or MRI scanners (i.

A large volume double channel 1H-X RF probe for hyperpolarized magnetic resonance at 0.0475 T.

In this work we describe a large volume 340 mL (1)H-X magnetic resonance (MR) probe for studies of hyperpolarized compounds at 0.0475 T. (1)H/(13)C and (1)H/(15)N probe configurations are demonstrated with the potential for extension to (1)H/(129)Xe.

Learning piano melodies in visuo-motor or audio-motor training conditions and the neural correlates of their cross-modal transfer.

To investigate the cross-modal transfer of movement patterns necessary to perform melodies on the piano, 22 non-musicians learned to play short sequences on a piano keyboard by (1) merely listening and replaying (vision of own fingers occluded) or (2) merely observing silent finger movements and replaying (on a silent keyboard). After training, participants recognized with above chance accuracy (1) audio-motor learned sequences upon visual presentation (89±17%), and (2) visuo-motor learned sequences upon auditory presentation (77±22%). The recognition rates for visual presentation significantly exceeded those for auditory presentation (p<.

Novel venting technique for intramedullary rod fixation of pathologic fractures.

This article introduces a novel technique to vent the femur and potentially decrease the embolic load created by reaming during intramedullary rod fixation of impending pathologic femur fractures. We used readily available operating room equipment to create a distal femoral vent hole without interfering with standard intramedullary instrumentation and with minimal increase in surgical time. This technique can be used for the prophylactic intramedullary stabilization of impending pathologic femur fractures from metabolic bone disease, metastatic cancer, and bisphosphonate use.

Realizing electronic medical record benefits: an easy-to-do usability study.

Heuristic evaluation is a type of study that is useful for uncovering usability issues in a human-computer interface such as the electronic medical record (EMR). Findings can be very useful in overcoming usability problems to better realize the benefits of the EMR. Correction of the usability violations will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of EMRs.

On-mountain coverage of competitive skiing and snowboarding events.

Skiing and snowboarding are popular sports worldwide both for competitive and recreational participants. Medical coverage of the competitive events can be challenging because of the wide variety of competition styles and venues. Skiing and snowboarding have similar overall rates of injury, with lower extremity injuries more prevalent in skiing and upper extremity injuries in snowboarding.

A method for detecting the temporal sequence of muscle activation during cycling using MRI.

Surface electromyography (EMG) can assess muscle recruitment patterns during cycling, but has limited applicability to studies of deep muscle recruitment and electrically stimulated contractions. We determined whether muscle recruitment timing could be inferred from MRI-measured transverse relaxation time constant (T(2)) changes and a cycle ergometer modified to vary power as a function of pedal angle. Six subjects performed 6 min of single-leg cycling under two conditions (E0°-230° and E90°-230°), which increased the power from 0°-230° and 90-230° of the pedal cycle, respectively.