Risk factors for persistent epiphora following successful canalicular laceration repair

AIM:To identify the risk factors of epiphora in patients with anatomical patency after surgical repair of canalicular laceration.METHODS:This retrospective case series included 178 cases of canalicular laceration repair from 2005 to 2012.Demographic data collected from each patient included age,sex,type of injury,distance from the distal lacerated end of the canaliculus to the punctum,the severity score for the structural abnormity of the medial canthus,the duration of stent placement,and the timing of surgery.The risk factors for epiphora were evaluated using Logistic regression models.RESULTS:Among the 178 cases,45(25.3%)with lacrimal patency after irrigation had symptomatic epiphora at the final follow-up.Patients'sex,age,type of injury,duration of stent placement,timing of surgery,and concurrent trauma were not found to be significantly associated with symptomatic epiphora after surgical repair of the lacerated canaliculus(P>0.05).A distance of more than 5 mm from the distal cut end to the punctum was closely and significantly associated with symptomatic epiphora after surgical repair of the lacerated canaliculus(P<0.01).Symptomatic epiphora was significantly more frequent in patients with higher severity scores for structural abnormities of the medial canthus(P<0.01).CONCLUSION:Our results indicate that the risk factors for postoperative symptomatic epiphora include a further distance between the distal cut end and the lacrimal punctum and a higher severity score for structural abnormities of the medial canthus.These findings could be used to prognosticate postoperative symptomatic epiphora.

Form factors for B meson weak decays in QCD light cone sum rules with a chiral current correlator

We report some applications of QCD light cone sum rules(LCSR)to B meson weak decays.Special emphasis is on estimates of the form factors for B decays into a pseudoscalar(P)/vector(V)meson,with a certain chiral current correlator.The main new ingredient,as compared with the case of the standard correlators,is that in the operator product expansion calculations,the contributions due to the twist-3 distribution amplitudes of the related light mesons,which are less known and would bring a larger uncertainty to the calculations with the standard correlators,cancel out fully in the B!P case and do out partially in the B!V one.An important observation,which is similar to that in soft collinear effective theory,is made in twist-3 approximation:whereas only one independent form factor is needed for parameterizing the hadronic matrix elements for a B!P transition induced by all the relevant heavy-light quark currents,there exist two independent form factors under the condition of neglecting the terms suppressed by a factor of m2V,for the B!V transition.Therefore,the improved LCSR approach could be of stronger predictive power for the weak form factors.Also,this approach is employed to understand the B!D transitions by introducing a leading twist-2 DA for an energetic D meson,combined with some of other QCDbased approaches.A detailed QCD next-to-leading order calculation of the B!p form factors is presented for an illustrative purpose,and the sum rule results are used to extract the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix element jVubj from the latest BaBar data.