Extent of Primary Breast Cancer Surgery: Standards and Individualized Concepts

Surgery is still a main therapeutic option in breast cancer treatment. Nowadays, methods of resection and reconstruction vary according to different tumors and patients. This review presents and discusses standards of care and arising questions on how radical primary breast cancer surgery should be according to different clinical situations. In most early breast cancer patients, breast conservation is the method of choice. The discussion on resection margins is still controversial as different studies show conflicting results. Modified radical mastectomy is the standard in locally advanced breast cancer patients, although there are different promising approaches to spare skin or even the nipple-areola complex. A sentinel node biopsy is the standard of care in clinically node-negative invasive breast cancer patients, whereas the significance of axillary lymphonodectomy seems to be questioned through a number of different findings. Although there are interesting findings to modify surgical approaches in very young or elderly breast cancer patients, it will always be an individualized approach if we do not adhere to current guidelines. Up to date, there are no special surgical procedures in BRCA mutation carriers or patients of high-risk families.     

Minimally invasive cortical-sparing surgery for bilateral pheochromocytomas

Introduction  

Cortical-sparing adrenalectomy in bilateral pheochromocytomas offers a postoperative corticoid-free course and has to be balanced against the risk of local recurrence. In this study we report our experience with the minimally invasive cortical-sparing adrenalectomy in patients with bilateral pheochromocytomas.     

Integrated self-monitoring of blood glucose system: handling step analysis

Self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) implicates a number of handling steps with the meter and the lancing device. Numerous user errors can occur during SMBG, and each step adds to the complexity of use. This report compares the required steps to perform SMBG of one fully integrated (the second generation of the Accu-Chek® Mobile), three partly integrated (Accu-Chek Compact Plus, Ascensia® Breeze®2, and Accu-Chek Aviva), and six conventional (Bayer Contour®, Bayer Contour USB, BGStar™, FreeStyle Lite®, OneTouch® Ultra® 2, and OneTouch Verio™Pro) systems. The results show that the fully integrated system reduces the number of steps to perform SMBG. The mean decrease is approximately 70% compared with the other systems. We assume that a reduction of handling steps also reduces the risk of potential user errors and improves the user-friendliness of the system.     

Pipeline embolization device (PED) for neurovascular reconstruction: initial experience in the treatment of 101 intracranial aneurysms and dissections

Introduction  

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the recently available flow diverter “pipeline embolization device” (PED) for the treatment of intracranial aneurysms and dissections.     

Learning visual saliency by combining feature maps in a nonlinear manner using AdaBoost

To predict where subjects look under natural viewing conditions, biologically inspired saliency models decompose visual input into a set of feature maps across spatial scales. The output of these feature maps are summed to yield the final saliency map. We studied the integration of bottom-up feature maps across multiple spatial scales by using eye movement data from four recent eye tracking datasets. We use AdaBoost as the central computational module that takes into account feature selection, thresholding, weight assignment, and integration in a principled and nonlinear learning framework. By combining the output of feature maps via a series of nonlinear classifiers, the new model consistently predicts eye movements better than any of its competitors.