Navigated versus conventional drilling of the knee in a model of obesity

Core decompression by exact drilling into ischemic lesions of the femoral condyle stays a challenging procedure, particularly in obese patients. The precision of fluoroscopically-based drilling compared to conventional drilling was evaluated in an in-vitro model for obesity. 40 sawbones were prepared mimicking osteonecrosis in obese patients. 20 sawbones were drilled by guidance of an intraoperative navigation system VectorVision® (BrainLAB, Munich, Germany); the other 20 sawbones were conventionally drilled by fluoroscopic control only. Regarding the distance to the desired mid-point of the lesion, a statistically significant difference with 0.55 mm in the navigated group and 1.19 mm in the control group could be stated (p<0.001). Significant differences were further found for the number of drilling corrections (p<0.001) and radiation time needed (p<0.001). Even in difficult circumstances as in obese patients, the drilling guided by the VectorVision®-navigation system shows high precision with simultaneous enormous reduction of radiation time.     

Nurse-led medication reviews and the quality of drug treatment of elderly hospitalized patients

Purpose  

To evaluate if nurses after receiving training in clinical pharmacology can improve the quality of the drug therapy in elderly hospitalized patients.     

Empirically derived subclassification of the autistic syndrome

A method is presented for empirical subclassification of autistic and autisticlike children, based on observations of current behavior. The advantage of the method is that it identifies profiles of cooccurring behaviors and accordingly assigns children to subtypes. The subtypes are more clinically homogeneous than the overall sample of autistic children. Preliminary findings are presented, including an effort to validate the subclasses by suggesting possible relationships between subtype membership and perinatal markers, developmental milestones, and independent measures of concurrent behavior.This work was supported by postdoctoral training grants MH-15147 and MH-16744 from the National Institute of Mental Health (Siegel), by the Scottish Rite Foundation (Anders, Siegel), by the John Merck Fund (Ciaranello), and by the National Institute of Mental Health grant MH-38064 (Anders, Ciaranello). A portion of this work was presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Society for Children and Adults with Autism, Salt Lake City, July 1983.     

P-fimbriae vaccines

Protection against acute pyelonephritis was induced by immunization of baboons with purified P-fimbriae ofEscherichia coli as vaccines. To test for cross-protective capacity of two different P-fimbriae vaccines we vaccinated baboons with P-fimbriae purified from eitherE. coli strain ER2 or strain JR1 and subsequently challenged the animals withE. coli strain JR1. All vaccinated animals showed elevated antibody titers to P-fimbriae from both of theE. coli strains used. Both vaccines tended to reduce the time of bacteriuria. They partially prevented pyelonephritis and protected against loss of renal function.     

Peroxidase-labelling of Chicken Antibodies

Chicken antibodies have several advantages over mammalian antibodies due to the phylogenetical differences between birds and mammals, resulting in an increased sensitivity and a decreased background in many immunological assays. So far, there has been a very limited use of avian antibodies. This is probably partly due to tradition but also because there are very few optimized methods for the labelling of chicken antibodies. We report upon the suitable conditions for peroxidase-labelling of chicken antibodies with a modified periodate method.