Effective detection of fetal sex using circulating fetal DNA in first-trimester maternal plasma.

The aim of this study was to develop a simple and effective method for noninvasively detecting fetal sex using circulating fetal DNA from first-trimester maternal plasma. A study was conducted with maternal plasma collected from 203 women between 5 and 12 wk of gestation. The presence of circulating fetal DNA was confirmed by a quantitative methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction of the unmethylated-PDE9A gene (U-PDE9A).

A pilot study of the epidemiology and associations of pulse pressure variation among non-cardiac surgery critically ill patients.

Background: A pulse pressure variation (PPV) ≥ 13% of mean arterial pressure (MAP) is an accepted marker of a fluid-responsive state. However, there is no study of its epidemiology and associations among non-cardiac critically ill patients.

Objectives: To conduct a pilot study of the epidemiology and associations of a PPV ≥ 13% among non-cardiac critically ill patients.

A pilot study of the epidemiology and associations of pulse pressure variation in cardiac surgery patients.

Background: Pulse pressure variation (PPV) is an accepted measure of intravascular filling. It can now be estimated automatically. However, there is limited knowledge of the epidemiology and associations of such estimates in cardiac surgery patients.

Atrophic acne scar treatment using triple combination therapy: dot peeling, subcision and fractional laser.

Atrophic scars are a common complication of acne. Many modalities are proposed but each does not yield satisfactory clinical outcomes. Thus, a new combination therapy is suggested that incorporates (i) dot peeling, the focal application and tattooing of higher trichloroacetic acid concentrations; (ii) subcision, the process by which there is separation of the acne scar from the underlying skin; and (iii) fractional laser irradiation.

Prognostic factors affecting oncologic outcomes in patients with locally recurrent rectal cancer: impact of patterns of pelvic recurrence on curative resection.

Background: The purpose of this study is to investigate prognostic factors affecting oncologic outcomes in patients with locally recurrent rectal cancer and determine whether recurrence patterns influence curative resection of recurrent tumor.

Materials And Methods: We examined 62 patients with isolated local recurrence following total mesorectal excision (TME) of the primary rectal cancer. Recurrence patterns were classified as central, anterior, posterior, lateral, and perineal with respect to the intra-pelvic tumor location.

Modification of the Greenwood formula for correlated response times.

Life-table methodology for interval-censored survival times is used to estimate marginal survival probabilities from data consisting of independent cohorts of correlated responses. We restrict our attention to situations where response times within cohorts are exchangeable and the marginal survival distributions are the same for all individuals within any cohort. A modification of the Greenwood formula is derived for estimating variances and covariances of the estimates of the marginal survival probabilities.