Fenoldopam infusion for renal protection in high-risk cardiac surgery patients: a randomized clinical study

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the renoprotective effects of fenoldopam in patients at high risk of postoperative acute kidney injury undergoing elective cardiac surgery requiring cardiopulmonary bypass. DESIGN: A double-blind randomized clinical trial. Setting: Hospital. Participants: One hundred ninety-three patients. Interventions: Patients undergoing cardiac surgery were randomly assigned to receive a continuous infusion of fenoldopam, 0.1 microg/kg/min (95 patients), or placebo (98 patients) for 24 hours. Patients were included if at least 1 of the following risk factors was present: preoperative serum creatinine > or =1.5 mg/dL, age >70 years, diabetes mellitus, or prior cardiac surgery. Serum creatinine and urinary output were measured at baseline (T1), 24 hours (T2), and 48 hours after surgery (T3). Acute kidney injury was defined as a postoperative serum creatinine level of > or =2 mg/dL with an increase in serum creatinine level of 0.7 mg/dL or greater from preoperative to maximum postoperative values. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Acute kidney injury developed in 12 of 95 (12.6%) patients receiving fenoldopam and in 27 of 98 (27.6%) patients receiving placebo (p = 0.02), whereas renal replacement therapy was started in 0 of 95 and 8 of 98 (8.2%) patients, respectively (p = 0.004). Serum creatinine was similar at baseline (1.8 +/- 0.4 mg/dL v 1.9 +/- 0.3 mg/dL) in the fenoldopam and placebo groups but differed significantly (p < 0.001 and p < 0.001) 24 hours (1.6 +/- 0.2 mg/dL v 2.5 +/- 0.6 mg/dL) and 48 hours (1.5 +/- 0.3 mg/dL v 2.8 +/- 0.4 mg/dL) after the operation. CONCLUSIONS: A 24-hour infusion of 0.1 mug/kg/min of fenoldopam prevented acute kidney injury in a high-risk population undergoing cardiac surgery.     

Implant recommendation as a replacement option after tooth loss for periodontal reasons

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to examine the frequency of implant recommendation by general dental practitioners to patients who had extractions as a result of periodontal disease and factors that influenced their decisions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Dentists in each of 20 general dental practice centers in Kuwait were asked to document replacement options given to patients after all tooth extractions performed for periodontal reasons within a 30-day period. The association of demographic and medical/dental history variables with the decision to recommend an implant was statistically tested. RESULTS: A total of 711 patients with a mean age +/- of 47.34 +/- 0.45 years (range 18-96) had 2202 teeth extracted for periodontal reasons during the study period. Only 21 implants for 12 patients were offered as a replacement option (1.7%). Factors significantly associated with a less likelihood of implant recommendation included older age, male gender, diabetes mellitus, inadequate compliance with regular periodontal maintenance visits, inadequate oral hygiene practices, and anterior tooth types (P < 0.05; chi test). CONCLUSION: Dental implants were rarely recommended to patients losing their teeth for periodontal reasons by general dentists in Kuwait.     

Dental patient awareness of smoking effects on oral health: Comparison of smokers and non-smokers

OBJECTIVES: The negative effects of cigarette smoking on oral health are well established, yet few studies assessed patient awareness of such effects. The aim of this study was to examine differences in dental patient knowledge and awareness of the effects of smoking on oral health between smokers and non-smokers. METHODS: Adult patients from 12 dental centers in Kuwait were asked to complete a 14-point self-administered structured questionnaire on the effects of smoking on oral health in this cross-sectional survey. Significant associations between oral health knowledge, smoking status, and sociodemographic variables were examined with univariate analysis and logistic regression. RESULTS: A total of 1012 subjects participated (response rate = 84.3%). The prevalence of smoking was 29.3%. Fewer smokers than non-smokers thought that oral health and smoking are related (92.2% vs. 95.8%; P = 0.020), and that smoking affected oral cancer (52.4% vs. 66.8%; P < 0.001), periodontal health (72% vs. 78%; P = 0.040), or tooth staining (86.1% vs. 90.9%; P = 0.018). Logistic regression analysis showed smokers to be significantly less aware of the oral health effects of smoking than non-smoking patients (OR=1.51; 95% CI: 1.05-2.16; P = 0.025). CONCLUSION: Smoking dental patients are significantly less aware of the oral health effects of smoking than non-smokers. Comparative studies in other populations may be warranted to ascertain the validity of these results.     

Psychosocial interventions and cancer patients: psychological and immune responses may depend on cancer type

Psychological and immunological responses of cancer patients to a psychosocial intervention program will be assessed over time. Previously it has been proposed that there are two large divisions in cancer histology (type I and II) and that the psychobiology of patients will vary accordingly.     

Genomic-scale prioritization of drug targets: the TDR Targets database

The increasing availability of genomic data for pathogens that cause tropical diseases has created new opportunities for drug discovery and development. However, if the potential of such data is to be fully exploited, the data must be effectively integrated and be easy to interrogate. Here, we discuss the development of the TDR Targets database (http://tdrtargets.org), which encompasses extensive genetic, biochemical and pharmacological data related to tropical disease pathogens, as well as computationally predicted druggability for potential targets and compound desirability information. By allowing the integration and weighting of this information, this database aims to facilitate the identification and prioritization of candidate drug targets for pathogens.     

Endoscopic scene labelling and augmentation using intraoperative pulsatile motion and colour appearance cues with preoperative anatomical priors

Purpose

Despite great advances in medical image segmentation, the accurate and automatic segmentation of endoscopic scenes remains a challenging problem. Two important aspects have to be considered in segmenting an endoscopic scene: (1) noise and clutter due to light reflection and smoke from cutting tissue, and (2) structure occlusion (e.g. vessels occluded by fat, or endophytic tumours occluded by healthy kidney tissue).

Methods

In this paper, we propose a variational technique to augment a surgeon’s endoscopic view by segmenting visible as well as occluded structures in the intraoperative endoscopic view. Our method estimates the 3D pose and deformation of anatomical structures segmented from 3D preoperative data in order to align to and segment corresponding structures in 2D intraoperative endoscopic views. Our preoperative to intraoperative alignment is driven by, first, spatio-temporal, signal processing based vessel pulsation cues and, second, machine learning based analysis of colour and textural visual cues. To our knowledge, this is the first work that utilizes vascular pulsation cues for guiding preoperative to intraoperative registration. In addition, we incorporate a tissue-specific (i.e. heterogeneous) physically based deformation model into our framework to cope with the non-rigid deformation of structures that occurs during the intervention.

Results

We validated the utility of our technique on fifteen challenging clinical cases with 45 % improvements in accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art method.

Conclusions

A new technique for localizing both visible and occluded structures in an endoscopic view was proposed and tested. This method leverages both preoperative data, as a source of patient-specific prior knowledge, as well as vasculature pulsation and endoscopic visual cues in order to accurately segment the highly noisy and cluttered environment of an endoscopic video. Our results on in vivo clinical cases of partial nephrectomy illustrate the potential of the proposed framework for augmented reality applications in minimally invasive surgeries.