Collagen-based biological glue after Appleby operation for advanced gastric cancer

Pancreatic fistula is a common complication of distal pancreatectomy; although various surgical procedures have been proposed, no clear advantage is evident for a single technique. We herein report the case of a 38-year-old patient affected by an advanced gastric carcinoma infiltrating the pancreas body, with exten- sive nodal metastases involving the celiac trunk, who underwent total gastrectomy with lymphadenectomy, distal pancreatectomy and resection en bloc of the celiac trunk (Appleby operation). At the end of the demolitive phase, the pancreatic stump and the aorta at the level of the celiac ligature were covered with a layer of Tachosil, a horse collagen sponge made with human coagulation factors (fibrinogen and thrombin). Presenting this case, we wish to highlight the possible sealing effect of this product and hypothesize a role in preventing pancreatic fistula and postoperative lymphorrhagia from extensive nodal dissection.

Follow-up after gastrectomy for cancer:results of an international web round table

Oncological follow-up after radical gastrectomy for cancer still represents a discrepancy in the field,with many retrospective series demonstrating that early diagnosis of recurrence does not result in an improvement in patient survival;yet,many centers with high quality of care still provide routine patient follow-up after surgery by clinical and instrumental controls.This was the topic for a web round table entitled"Rationale and limits of oncological follow-up after gastrectomy for cancer"that was launched one year before the 10th International Gastric Cancer Congress.Authors having specific expertise were invited to comment on their previous publications to provide the subject for an open debate.During a three-month-long discussion,32 authors from 12 countries participated,and 2299people visited the dedicated web page.Substantial differences emerged between the participants:authors from Japan,South Korea,Italy,Brazil,Germany and France currently engage in instrumental follow-up,whereas authors from Eastern Europe,Peru and India do not,and British and American surgeons practice it in a rather limited manner or in the context of experimental studies.Although endoscopy is still considered useful by most authors,all the authors recognized that computed tomography scanning is the method of choice to detect recurrence;however,many limit follow-up to clinical and biochemical examinations,and acknowledge the lack of improved survival with early detection.

NONLOCAL CROWD DYNAMICS MODELS FOR SEVERAL POPULATIONS

This paper develops the basic analytical theory related to some recently intro- duced crowd dynamics models. Where well posedness was known only locally in time, it is here extended to all of R＋. The results on the stability with respect to the equations are improved. Moreover, here the case of several populations is considered, obtaining the well posedness of systems of multi-D non-local conservation laws. The basic analytical tools are provided by the classical Kruzkov theory of scalar conservation laws in several space dimensions.

Microbial Properties of Probiotic Fermented Milk Supplemented with Ginseng Extracts

The therapeutic properties of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 and ginseng extracts have been well documented. The objective of this study was to measure growth and survival of L. rhamnosus GR-1 in milk fortified with ginseng extracts during storage period of 28 days. Five formulations of milk (1% fat) were prepared. Two samples were fortified with alcoholic ginseng extract (AGE: 150 μg/mL, AGE: 500 μg/mL) and the other two samples were fortified with aqueous ginseng extract (QGE: 150 μg/mL, QGE: 500 μg/ml) and one with no ginseng extract (C). The mixtures were autoclaved for 15 min, cooled to 37?C and inoculated with 1% starter culture. The samples were then incubated anaerobically at 37℃ overnight. Selective MRS agar containing 0.015 g/L fusidic acid was used to enumerate L. rhamnosus GR-1 after 1, 14, and 28 d storage at 4℃. All ginseng-fortified samples supported the growth and survival of L. rhamnosus GR-1, as viable counts were detected at each measurement point throughout the 28 d storage period. After 1 d of storage, total colony counts for L. rhamnosus GR-1 in AGE: 150 μg/mL and AGE: 500 μg/mL were 1.3 × 109 and 1.4 × 109 CFU/mL, respectively;probiotic counts in QGE 150 μg/mL and QGE: 500 μg/mL were 1.5 × 109 and 1.4 × 109 CFU/mL, respectively. Additionally, L. rhamnosus GR-1 viability remained stable throughout the 28 days storage period, as no significant decrease (p L. rhamnosus GR-1 can remain viable in presence of ginseng extracts during storage period and there is potential for incorporating ginseng extracts in other probiotic dairy products.

Dysplasia in perforated intestinal pneumatosis complicating a previous jejuno-ileal bypass:A cautionary note

We present the case of an elderly woman who developed a bowel perforation related to pneumatosis intestinalis, 33 years after a jejuno-ileal bypass for severe obesity. Final histological examination revealed the presence of dysplasia in the resected specimen. On the basis of our case and a review of the literature, we discuss the etiopathogenesis, the clinical aspects and the treatment of this rare condition.

Metal Oxide Nanocrystals Multi-Parametric Gas Sensors

Interest in nanowires of semiconducting oxides is exponentially grown in the last years,due to their attracting potential applications in electronic,optical and sensor field.We have focused our attention on the sensing properties of indium and zinc oxide nanostructures.We have studied the influence of the deposition conditions on the nanostructures morphology and sensing properties.We report on the growth of ZnO and In_2O_3 nanostructures on silicon and alumina substrates,using vapour phase technique.We have synthesized,depending on the growth conditions,different structures such as nano-wires, tetrapod,nano-comb,nano-necklace,nano-pencil ZnO/In_2O_3 without using any metal catalyst.

Radiation damping optical enhancement in cold atoms

The typically tiny effect of radiation damping on a moving body can be amplified to a favorable extent by exploiting the sharp reflectivity slope at one edge of an optically induced stop-band in atoms loaded into an optical lattice.In this paper,this phenomenon is demonstrated for the periodically trapped and coherently driven cold 87Rb atoms,where radiation damping might be much larger than that anticipated in previous proposals and become comparable with radiation pressure.Such an enhancement could be observed even at speeds of only a few meters per second with less than 1.0%absorption,making radiation damping experimentally accessible.

Single-photon-level light storage with distributed Rydberg excitations in cold atoms

We present an improved version of the superatom(SA)model to examine the slow-light dynamics of a few-photons signal field in cold Rydberg atoms with van der Waals(vdW)interactions.A main feature of this version is that it promises consistent estimations on total Rydberg excitations based on dynamic equations of SAs or atoms.We consider two specific cases in which the incident signal field contains more photons with a smaller detuning or less photons with a larger detuning so as to realize the single-photon-level light storage.It is found that vdW interactions play a significant role even for the slow-light dynamics of a single-photon signal field as distributed Rydberg excitations are inevitable in the picture of dark-state polariton.Moreover,the stored(retrieved)signal field exhibits a clearly asymmetric(more symmetric)profile because its leading and trailing edges undergo different(identical)traveling journeys,and higher storage/retrieval efficiencies with well preserved profiles apply only to weaker and well detuned signal fields.These findings are crucial to understand the nontrivial interplay of single-photon-level light storage and distributed Rydberg excitations.