Local block

Severe acute pancreatitis (AP) is a life-threatening pancreatic inflammatory disease with a high mortality rate (∼40%). Existing pharmaceutical therapies in development or in clinical trials showed insufficient treatment efficacy due to their single molecular therapeutic target, poor water solubility, short half-life, limited pancreas-targeting specificity, etc. Herein, acid-responsive hollow mesoporous Prussian blue nanoparticles wrapped with neutrophil membranes and surface modified with the N , N -dimethyl-1,3-propanediamine moiety were developed for codelivering membrane-permeable calcium chelator BAPTA-AM (BA) and trypsin activity inhibitor gabexate mesylate (Ga)...

BACKGROUND: We aimed to compare the analgesic effects and incidence of urinary retention between ultrasound-guided intersphincteric space block combined with low-dose ropivacaine spinal anesthesia and conventional-dose ropivacaine spinal anesthesia post-hemorrhoidectomy. METHODS: Fifty patients aged 20-65 years who underwent elective hemorrhoidectomy were stochastically assigned to one of two groups. Spinal anesthesia was induced with 8 mg ropivacaine, combined with ultrasound-guided intersphincteric space block in the treatment group...

The tongue's intricate 3D structure, comprising localized functional units, plays a crucial role in the production of speech. When measured using tagged MRI, these functional units exhibit cohesive displacements and derived quantities that facilitate the complex process of speech production. Non-negative matrix factorization-based approaches have been shown to estimate the functional units through motion features, yielding a set of building blocks and a corresponding weighting map. Investigating the link between weighting maps and speech acoustics can offer significant insights into the intricate process of speech production...

Patients with severe cardiopulmonary morbidity present a unique challenge to peri- and intraoperative providers. Inducing general anesthesia in this patient population poses the risk of adverse events that could lead to poor surgical outcomes, prolonged debilitation, or death. Therefore, it is important that anesthesiologists become comfortable with preoperative evaluation as well as alternative strategies to providing surgical anesthesia. This case report details the clinical course of a patient with severe cardiopulmonary morbidity who underwent open inguinal hernia repair without oral or intravenous sedation after receiving multi-level paravertebral blocks in addition to isolated ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric nerve blocks...

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression is considered to play an essential role in the pathogenesis of colorectal adenocarcinoma. This study assessed the expression and predictive/prognostic value of EGFR expression in pre-op biopsy and post-op resection specimens in patients receiving neoadjuvant radiotherapy/neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NRT/NCRT). Thirty-four consecutive patients were included in this study. The association between the prognostic features and EGFR immunohistochemical expression was analyzed in pre- (n=34) and post-treatment (n=22) tissue samples in cases with available tissue blocks...

Tonsillectomy can lead to significant postoperative pain, which can impact the recovery process. Traditional analgesic approaches may entail risks due to medication use. Considering that the tonsils are innervated by the glossopharyngeal and maxillary nerves, implementing glossopharyngeal and maxillary nerve blocks can provide analgesia. Ultrasound guidance may improve its effectiveness and safety. A woman in her 30s with recurrent tonsillitis underwent tonsillectomy under general anesthesia. After induction, we performed an ultrasound-guided selective glossopharyngeal nerve block and an ultrasound-guided maxillary nerve block with ropivacaine...

BACKGROUND: Effective post-operative analgesia profoundly influences patient recovery and outcomes after caesarean delivery. The Transversus Abdominis Plane (TAP) block represents a potential alternative, potentially offering greater effectiveness than epidural analgesia while causing fewer adverse effects. OBJECTIVE: To assess if the abdominal transverse block provides superior postoperative pain relief in patients undergoing caesarean delivery compared to epidural analgesia...

BACKGROUND: Demodex density is known to increase in various immunosuppressive conditions. The relationship between biologic therapy and Demodex density remains unknown. We aimed to investigate whether the density of Demodex mites is higher in psoriasis patients treated with biologic agents compared to treatment-naive or topically treated patients. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted, comparing psoriasis patients receiving biologic therapy (n = 34) with controls (n = 33)...

Voltage-gated ion channels are transmembrane proteins responsible for the generation and propagation of action potentials in excitable cells. In the past few years, crystal structures of ion channels have become accessible and, when combined with mutagenesis data, have aided in the discovery of drugs that can modulate ion conduction. However, many traditional drugs lack selectivity and come with adverse side effects. The emergence of photopharmacology has provided an orthogonal way of controlling the activity of compounds, enabling the regulation of ion conduction with light...

BACKGROUND: Liver lesions mainly occur inside the liver parenchyma, which are difficult to locate and have complicated relationships with essential vessels. Thus, preoperative planning is crucial for the resection of liver lesions. Accurate segmentation of the hepatic and portal veins (PVs) on computed tomography (CT) images is of great importance for preoperative planning. However, manually labeling the mask of vessels is laborious and time-consuming, and the labeling results of different clinicians are prone to inconsistencies...

Accurate recognition of fetal anatomical structure is a pivotal task in ultrasound (US) image analysis. Sonographers naturally apply anatomical knowledge and clinical expertise to recognizing key anatomical structures in complex US images. However, mainstream object detection approaches usually treat each structure recognition separately, overlooking anatomical correlations between different structures in fetal US planes. In this work, we propose a Fetal Anatomy Reasoning Network (FARN) that incorporates two kinds of relationship forms: a global context semantic block summarized with visual similarity and a local topology relationship block depicting structural pair constraints...

The development of semiconducting polymers with good processability in green solvents and competitive electrical performance is essential for realizing sustainable large-scale manufacturing and commercialization of organic electronics. A major obstacle is the processability-performance dichotomy that is dictated by the lack of ideal building blocks with balanced polarity, solubility, electronic structures, and molecular conformation. Herein, through the integration of donor, quinoid and acceptor units, an unprecedented building block, namely TQBT, is introduced for constructing a serial of conjugated polymers...

An exciton-phonon (ex-ph) model based on our recently developed block interaction product basis framework is introduced to simulate the distal charge separation (CS) process in aggregated perylenediimide (PDI) trimer incorporating the quantum dynamic method, i.e., the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group. The electronic Hamiltonian in the ex-ph model is represented by nine constructed diabatic states, which include three local excited (LE) states and six charge transfer (CT) states from both the neighboring and distal chromophores...

This study aimed to control the oral absorption of cyclosporine A (CsA) with the use of a mucosal drug delivery system (mDDS). Mucopenetrating nanocarriers (MP/NCs) and mucoadhesive nanocarriers (MA/NCs) were prepared by flash nanoprecipitation employing polystyrene-block-poly(ethylene glycol) and polystyrene-block-poly(N,N-dimethyl aminoethyl methacrylate), respectively. Their particle distribution in the rat gastrointestinal tract were visualized by fluorescent imaging. Plasma concentrations were monitored after oral administration of CsA-loaded MP/NCs (MP/CsA) and MA/NCs (MA/CsA) to rats...

Rationale: To meet the need of long-acting analgesia in postoperative pain management, slow-releasing formulations of local anesthetics (LAs) have been extensively investigated. However, challenges still remain in obtaining such formulations in a facile and cost-effective way, and a mechanism for controlling the release rate to achieve an optimal duration is still missing. Methods: In this study, nanosheets formed by a self-assembling peptide were used to encapsulate ropivacaine in a soft-coating manner. By adjusting the ratio between the peptide and ropivacaine, ropivacaine particles with different size were prepared...

Background The care provided to the mother and child from delivery to six weeks after is defined as postnatal care. The postnatal period is both a happy and critical phase for the mother and the newborn. However, the provision of high-quality care services is often ignored during this time. The objective of this study was to assess postnatal care services quality by Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers and associated factors such as newborn care in rural tribal areas of Gujarat, India. Methodology An ethnographic approach was adopted...

Post-mastectomy pain syndrome (PMPS) is a syndrome broadly applied to the development of chronic pain after surgical breast intervention (i.e., lumpectomy and mastectomy). The incidence of PMPS is likely underreported, and this has contributed to a paucity of high-level evidence related to the treatment of the aforementioned condition. A drive to reduce the burden of opioid use has led to pain management physicians trialing a variety of strategies to help patients manage PMPS. This review discusses the latest evidence behind treatment options for PMPS, exploring medications as well as interventional techniques (e...

Secreted acid phosphatase (SapM) is an immunomodulator of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and consequently plays a crucial role in disease onset and development upon infection. Importantly, the virulence of SapM has rendered SapM an attractive target for drug development. However, the mechanism underlying the role of SapM in facilitating bacillary survival remains to be fully elucidated. In this context, the present study demonstrated that SapM hampered cellular autophagy to facilitate bacillary survival in  mycobacterial -infected macrophages...

In recent years, deep learning has ushered in significant development in medical image registration, and the method of non-rigid registration using deep neural networks to generate a deformation field has higher accuracy. However, unlike monomodal medical image registration, multimodal medical image registration is a more complex and challenging task. This paper proposes a new linear-to-nonlinear framework (L2NLF) for multimodal medical image registration. The first linear stage is essentially image conversion, which can reduce the difference between two images without changing the authenticity of medical images, thus transforming multimodal registration into monomodal registration...

This study delves into the formation of nanoscale polyhedral block copolymer particles (PBCPs) exhibiting cubic, octahedral, and variant geometries. These structures represent a pioneering class that has never been fabricated previously. PBCP features distinct variations in curvature on the outer surface, aligning with the edges and corners of polyhedral shapes. This characteristic sharply contrasts with previous block copolymers (BCPs), which displayed a smooth spherical surface. The emergence of these cornered morphologies presents an intriguing and counterintuitive phenomenon and is linked to process parameters, such as evaporation rates and initial concentration, while keeping other variables constant...