Factors predicting sensory and motor recovery after the repair of upper limb peripheral nerve injuries

OBJECTIVE： To investigate the factors associated with sensory and motor recovery after the repair of upper limb peripheral nerve injuries. DATA SOURCES： The online PubMed database was searched for English articles describing outcomes after the repair of median, ulnar, radial, and digital nerve injuries in humans with a publication date between 1 January 1990 and 16 February 2011. STUDY SELECTION： The following types of article were selected： （1） clinical trials describ- ing the repair of median, ulnar, radial, and digital nerve injuries published in English; and （2） studies that reported sufficient patient information, including age, mechanism of injury, nerve injured, injury location, defect length, repair time, repair method, and repair materials. SPSS 13.0 software was used to perform univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses and to in- vestigate the patient and intervention factors associated with outcomes. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES： Sensory function was assessed using the Mackinnon-Dellon scale and motor function was assessed using the manual muscle test. Satisfactory motor recovery was defined as grade M4 or M5, and satisfactory sensory recovery was defined as grade S3＋ or S4. RESULTS： Seventy-one articles were included in this study. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that repair time, repair materials, and nerve injured were inde- pendent predictors of outcome after the repair of nerve injuries （P 〈 0.05）, and that the nerve injured was the main factor affecting the rate of good to excellent recovery. CONCLUSION： Predictors of outcome after the repair of peripheral nerve injuries include age, gender, repair time, repair materials, nerve injured, defect length, and duration of follow-up.

Penile erectile dysfunction after brachial plexus root avulsion injury in rats

Our previous studies have demonstrated that some male patients suffering from brachial plexus injury, particularly brachial plexus root avulsion, show erectile dysfunction to varying degrees. However, the underlying mechanism remains poorly understood. In this study, we evaluated the erectile function after establishing brachial plexus root avulsion models with or without spinal cord injury in rats. After these models were established, we administered apomorphine （via a sub- cutaneous injection in the neck） to observe changes in erectile function. Rats subjected to simple brachial plexus root avulsion or those subjected to brachial plexus root avulsion combined with spinal cord injury had significantly fewer erections than those subjected to the sham operation. Expression of neuronal nitric oxide synthase did not change in brachial plexus root avulsion rats. However, neuronal nitric oxide synthase expression was significantly decreased in brachial plexus root avulsion ＋ spinal cord injury rats. These findings suggest that a decrease in neuronal nitric oxide synthase expression in the penis may play a role in erectile dysfunction caused by the combi- nation of brachial plexus root avulsion and spinal cord injury.

A rain-type adaptive optical flow method and its application in tropical cyclone rainfall nowcasting

A rain-type adaptive pyramid Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi(A-PKLT)optical flow method for radar echo extrapolation is proposed.This method introduces a rain-type classification algorithm that can classify radar echoes into six types:convective,stratiform,surrounding convective,isolated convective core,isolated convective fringe,and weak echoes.Then,new schemes are designed to optimize specific parameters of the PKLT optical flow based on the rain type of the echo.At the same time,the gradients of radar reflectivity in the fringe positions corresponding to all types of rain echoes are increased.As a result,corner points that are characteristic points used for PKLT optical flow tracking in the surrounding area will be increased.Therefore,more motion vectors are purposefully obtained in the whole radar echo area.This helps to describe the motion characteristics of the precipitation more precisely.Then,the motion vectors corresponding to each type of rain echo are merged,and a denser motion vector field is generated by an interpolation algorithm on the basis of merged motion vectors.Finally,the dense motion vectors are used to extrapolate rain echoes into 0-60-min nowcasts by a semi-Lagrangian scheme.Compared with other nowcasting methods for four landfalling typhoons in or near Shanghai,the new optical flow method is found to be more accurate than the traditional cross-correlation and optical flow methods,particularly showing a clear improvement in the nowcasting of convective echoes on the spiral rainbands of typhoons.