Open stent grafting with a trifurcated graft for an infected aortic arch aneurysm concomitant with severe calcified aorta.

An infected aortic arch aneurysm is a rare but life-threatening condition. Moreover, surgical treatment for patients with severe calcified aorta is challenging and needs a well-planned strategy. We report a patient with an infected aortic arch aneurysm concomitant with severe calcification of the aorta in whom good results were obtained with open stent grafting in combination with a trifurcated graft.

Determining if the relative shear modulus or the inverse of the relative shear modulus should be imaged using axial strain ratios on agar phantoms.

An axial strain image is considered to be an image of a relative shear modulus. However, through simulations of focal lesions, it was previously confirmed that reconstruction imaging of the 1-D relative shear modulus or its inverse obtained from the ratio of the axial strain in the axial direction (i.e.

Quantitative evaluation for anastomotic technique of coronary artery bypass grafting by using in-vitro mock circulatory system.

This study focuses on the development of self-training system for surgical operation and quantitative evaluation of the surgical skills. Our group has developed a self-training system for anastomotic technique in Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG) to contribute the education of cardiovascular surgery without a risk to patients. The self-training system consists of following portions, 1) "YOUCAN", coronary and graft vascular silicone model, 2) "BEAT", a device, simulating stabilized myocardial surface, and 3) Quantitative evaluation system based on in vitro mock circulatory system.

Cloning and characterization of the novel isoforms for PGF2 alpha receptor in the bovine corpus luteum.

The cDNA clones for five novel isoforms of prostaglandin (PG) F2 alpha receptor (FP) were isolated from the bovine corpus luteal cDNA library. The sequence analysis revealed that each FP isoform, respectively, encodes 325 (alpha), 326 (beta), 339 (gamma), 293 (delta), and 298 (epsilon) amino acid proteins, carrying the specific carboxyl tails (C-tails) caused by alternative mRNA splicing. Depending on the splicing sites, FP isoforms can be classified into two types.