Etiologic Classification Criteria of ARCO on Femoral Head Osteonecrosis Part 2: Alcohol-Associated Osteonecrosis

Background

Although alcohol is a leading risk factor for osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH) and its prevalence reportedly ranges from 20% to 45%, there are no unified classification criteria for this subpopulation. In 2015, Association Research Circulation Osseous decided to develop classification criteria for alcohol-associated ONFH.

Temporal Trends of Women Enrollment in Major Cardiovascular Randomized Clinical Trials

Background

Although it is known that women do not participate in trials as frequently as men, there are limited recent data examining how women recruitment has changed over time.

Intracranial thrombosed anastomosing hemangioma: Case report

An anastomosing hemangioma is a relatively new diagnosis of a benign vascular lesion that is typically found in the genitourinary tract. On imaging, anastomosing hemangiomas have a broad differential diagnosis and can resemble malignant lesions such as angiosarcoma. Here we present a case of a 33-year-old male with seizures who on imaging was found to have a presumed recurrent intracranial meningioma. After surgical resection of his lesion, this case was pathologically diagnosed as having anastomosing hemangioma. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a case of a thrombosed anastomosing hemangioma located at intracranial and intradural region.     

Family correlates of daughter's and son's locus of control expectancies during childhood

Children who expect they can bring about good outcomes and avoid bad outcomes tend to experience more personal successes. Little is known about factors that contribute to these ‘control expectancies’. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether children's internal control expectancies occur in the context of parents’ internal control expectancies, low family strain, and high family cohesiveness and whether these factors are more strongly related to daughters’ than sons’ control expectancies. A community sample of 85 children aged 9–11 years and their parents (85 mothers; 63 fathers) completed rating scales. Fathers’ more internal control expectancies and mothers’ reports of fewer family strains were associated with daughters’ but not sons’ greater internal control expectancies, and greater family cohesiveness was related to both daughters’ and sons’ internal control orientations. These findings suggest that family factors may contribute to children's, particularly daughters’, development of internal control expectancies.     

Predicting complete response: is there a role for non-operative management of rectal cancer?

Pre-operative chemoradiotherapy followed by a total mesorectal excision (TME) is the standard of care for patients with locally advanced (stage II or III) rectal cancer. Approximately 20% of patients may achieve a pathologic complete response after chemoradiation therapy (CRT), which has been shown to be associated with better oncologic outcomes. Whether surgery can be avoided in this population is an area of active investigation. Recent studies demonstrated feasibility and safety of non-operative management in patients with clinical complete response (cCR) after chemoradiotherapy. In this article, we set out to review the current data on non-operative management and to identify areas requiring further investigation, including improvement in imaging for reassessment after CRT and identifying the optimal time frame for restaging. As the field moves forward with non-operative management in select patients with rectal cancer, there continues to be a need to better understand the prognostic factors and biomarkers that may more accurately characterize patients who are qualified for this “wait-and-see” approach and thereby avoid overtreatment, potentially leading to improvements in long-term quality of life.     

Stitching the fabric back together: child fostering attitudes in the transition to a chronic HIV epidemic

There are an estimated 56 million orphans and vulnerable children across sub-Saharan Africa. Communities typically care for orphan children through informal caring arrangements – either within or outside of kinship networks. Within Kenya, an estimated 250,000 children live on the streets. There is less research related to fostering attitudes of this special population than orphans and vulnerable children generally. Important research over the past decade has illuminated multiple ways in which children are made more vulnerable because of HIV, including parental death and street-migration from HIV-affected households. As HIV transitions from a terminal illness to a chronic, manageable one, research is also required to establish how parents living with HIV can be an asset to children. In this study, we assess whether mothers living with HIV were very willing to foster biologically-related children, and street-involved children, how these fostering attitudes differed from mothers not living with HIV, and whether differences in fostering attitudes by reported HIV status were mediated by social support, family functioning and general self-rated health. Approximately 40% of mothers living with HIV were very willing to provide long-term foster care to biologically-related or street-involved children. This was less than the percentage of mothers not living with HIV, who were very willing to foster biologically-related children (61%) or street-involved children (58%). Significant portions of these differences were explained by social support, family functioning and general self-rated health. Multi-sectoral approaches are suggested by these findings in order to improve the child-fostering capacity of mothers living with HIV. Improving social support, family functioning and general self-rated health among HIV-infected mothers may not only provide protective benefits for the mothers and their children, but also expand the community’s capacity to care for orphan and vulnerable children.