Six-minute walk test (6MWT) is one of the cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). It is not only used to assess the cardiac and pulmonary function of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but also used to assess COPD patients’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) or self-management in daily life. With the concept of enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) put forward, assessing patients’ preoperative cardiac and pulmonary function, establishing preoperative and early postoperative exercises standards, as well as assessing cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation after surgery become much more important. CPET gets more attention from clinical surgeons. This study focuses on the clinical value and status of 6MWT in thoracic surgery.
ObjectiveTo explore the effect of body mass index (BMI) on the outcomes of laparoscopic surgery for esophageal hiatal hernia.MethodsWe divided the patients who underwent hiatal hernioraphy and fundoplication surgery in our hospital between July 2013 and June 2018 into two groups according to the BMI: a group A, BMI ≥24 kg/m2, 77 patients, 41 males, 36 females, with an average age of 42 years; a group B: BMI<24 kg/m2, 63 patients, 38 males, 25 females, with an average age of 67 years, and the age, gender, type of hiatal hernia, score of subjective feeling of symptoms, level of reflux esophagitis were analyzed with the propensity score matching method. Fifty one patients were successfully matched in each group, and the curative effect of surgery was compared between the two groups.ResultsThere was no statistical difference in the type of surgery, intraoperative complications, postoperative complications, and hospital stay between the two groups (P>0.05). The operative time of the group A was significantly longer than that of the group B (P=0.023). There was no statistical difference between the two groups in postoperative recurrence (P=0.741).ConclusionThe operative time in overweight patients is significantly longer than that in the non-overweight patients, but it has no effect on the surgical outcomes and complications.
Confocal laser endomicroscopy technology can obtain cell-level images in real time and in situ, which can assist doctors in real-time intraoperative diagnosis, but its non-invasiveness makes it difficult to relocate the optical biopsy site. The confocal probe localization algorithm can automatically calculate the coordinates of the probe tip, that is, the coordinates of the optical biopsy site. In this paper, a confocal probe localization algorithm based on region growing and endoscope size prior was proposed. The algorithm detected the probe region by region growing on the probe edge image, then searched for tip points based on a given probe axis, and iteratively optimized it. Finally, based on the single-degree-of-freedom motion characteristics of the probe, the three-dimensional coordinates of the tip of the probe were calculated by using the prior information of the size of the endoscope, which solved the scale uncertainty problem of the monocular camera. The confocal probe localization algorithm was tested on the dataset collected in this paper. The results showed that our algorithm no longer relied on the color information of the probe, avoided the influence of uneven illumination on the gray value of the probe pixels, and had a more robust location accuracy and running speed. Within the length of the probe extending out of the endoscope from 0 to 5 cm, the pixel error could be as low as 11.76 pixels, and the average relative position error could be as low as 1.66 mm, which can achieve the real-time and accurate localization of the confocal probe.
Objective To research the relationship between decrease of serum surfactant protein D (SP-D) level reduced by pulmonary rehabilitation training and postoperative pulmonary complications (PPC). Methods From May 2015 through December 2015, 80 consecutive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with surgical treatment in West China Hospital, who were at least with a high risk factor, were randomly divided into two groups including a group R and a group C. There were 36 patients with 25 males and 11 females at age of 63.98±8.32 years in the group R and 44 patients with 32 males and 12 females at age of 64.58±6.71 years in the group C.The group R underwent an intensive preoperative pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) training for one week, and then with lobectomy. The group C underwent only lobectomy with conventional perioperative managements. Postoperative pulmonary complications, average days in hospital, other clinic data and the serum SP-D level in a series of time from the date of admission to discharge (5 time points) were analyzed. Results The incidence of PPC in the group R was 5.56%(2/36),which was lower than that in the group C (P=0.032). The descender of the serum SP-D level of the patients in the group R (30.75±5.57 ng/mlvs. 24.22±3.08 ng/ml) was more obvious than that in the group C (31.16±7.81 ng/mlvs. 30.29±5.80 ng/ml,P=0.012). The descender of the serum SP-D level of the patients with PPC was more obvious than that of patients without PPC (P=0.012). Conclusion The preoperative PR training could reduce the PPC of lung cancer surgery with high risk factors. The serum SP-D level could reflect the effect of preoperative pulmonary rehabilitation training.
As a complex system, the topology of human’s brain network has an important effect on further study of brain’s structural and functional mechanism. Graph theory, a kind of sophisticated analytic strategies, is widely used for analyzing complex brain networks effectively and comparing difference of topological structure alteration in normal development and pathological condition. For the purpose of using this analysis methodology efficiently, it is necessary to develop graph-based visualization software. Thus, we developed VisConnectome, which displays analysis results of the brain network friendly and intuitively. It provides an original graphical user interface (GUI) including the tool window, tool bar and innovative double slider filter, brain region bar, runs in any Windows operating system and doesn’t rely on any platform such as Matlab. When importing the user-defined script file that initializes the brain network, VisConnectome abstracts the brain network to the ball-and-stick model and render it. VisConnectome allows a series of visual operations, such as identifying nodes and connection, modifying properties of nodes and connection such as color and size with the color palette and size double slider, imaging the brain regions, filtering the brain network according to its size property in a specific domain as simplification and blending with the brain surface as a context of the brain network. Through experiment and analysis, we conclude that VisConnectome is an effective visualization software with high speed and quality, which helps researchers to visualize and compare the structural and functional brain networks flexibly.
ObjectivesTo systematically review the association between pretreatment serum ferritin (SF) concentration and prognosis in lung cancer patients.MethodsDatabases including PubMed, EMbase, Web of Science, CNKI, VIP and WanFang Data were electronically searched to identify cohort studies on the relationship between the pretreatment SF concentration and prognosis of lung cancer patients from inception to January, 2020. Literature screening, data extraction and quality evaluation of included studies were independently performed by two reviewers. Then, meta-analysis was conducted by Stata 12.0 software.ResultsA total of 8 cohort studies involving 1 002 lung cancer patients were included. The results of meta-analysis indicated that patients with higher pretreatment SF concentration had poorer overall survival (HR=1.70, 95%CI 1.06 to 2.73, P=0.029) compared with patients with lower pretreatment SF concentration. Subgroup analysis based on the pathological type manifested showed that pretreatment SF concentration only had high prognostic value in small cell lung cancer patients (HR=4.78, 95%CI 2.83 to 8.05, P<0.001).ConclusionsLung cancer patients with high pretreatment SF level have worse overall survival. Pretreatment SF concentration may serve as an independent prognostic factor in lung cancer, especially in small cell lung cancer. Due to the limited quality and quantity of included studies, more prospective well-designed studies are required to verify above conclusions.
Objective To compare the effectiveness of O-arm navigation and ultrasound volume navigation (UVN) in guiding screw placement during minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MIS-TLIF) surgery. Methods Sixty patients who underwent MIS-TLIF surgery for lumbar disc herniation between June 2022 and June 2023 and met the selection criteria were included in the study. They were randomly assigned to group A (screw placement guided by UVN during MIS-TLIF) or group B (screw placement guided by O-arm navigation during MIS-TLIF), with 30 cases in each group. There was no significant difference in baseline data, including gender, age, body mass index, and surgical segment, between the two groups (P>0.05). Intraoperative data, including average single screw placement time, total radiation dose, and average single screw effective radiation dose, were recorded and calculated. Postoperatively, X-ray film and CT scans were performed at 10 days to evaluate screw placement accuracy and assess facet joint violation. Pearson correlation and Spearman correlation analyses were used to observe the relationship between the studied parameters (average single screw placement time and screw placement accuracy grading) and BMI. Results The average single screw placement time in group B was significantly shorter than that in group A, and the total radiation dose of single segment and multi-segment and the average single screw effective radiation dose in group B were significantly higher than those in group A (P<0.05). There was no significant difference in the total radiation dose between single segment and multiple segments in group B (P>0.05), while the total radiation dose of multiple segments was significantly higher than that of single segment in group A (P<0.05). No significant difference was found in the accuracy of screw implantation between the two groups (P>0.05). In both groups, the grade 1 and grade 2 screws broke through the outer wall of the pedicle, and no screw broke through the inner wall of the pedicle. There was no significant difference in the rate of facet joint violation between the two groups (P>0.05). In group A, both the average single screw placement time and screw placement accuracy grading were positively correlated with BMI (r=0.677, P<0.001; r=0.222, P=0.012), while in group B, neither of them was correlated with BMI (r=0.224, P=0.233; r=0.034, P=0.697). Conclusion UVN-guided screw placement in MIS-TLIF surgery demonstrates comparable efficiency, visualization, and accuracy to O-arm navigation, while significantly reducing radiation exposure. However, it may be influenced by factors such as obesity, which poses certain limitations.
Objective To design and construct a graphene oxide (GO)/silver nitrate (Ag3PO4)/chitosan (CS) composite coating for rapidly killing bacteria and preventing postoperative infection in implant surgery. Methods GO/Ag3PO4 composites were prepared by ion exchange method, and CS and GO/Ag3PO4 composites were deposited on medical titanium (Ti) sheets successively. The morphology, physical image, photothermal and photocatalytic ability, antibacterial ability, and adhesion to the matrix of the materials were characterized. Results The GO/Ag3PO4 composites were successfully prepared by ion exchange method and the heterogeneous structure of GO/Ag3PO4 was proved by morphology phase test. The heterogeneous structure formed by Ag3PO4 and GO reduced the band gap from 1.79 eV to 1.39 eV which could be excited by 808 nm near-infrared light. The photothermal and photocatalytic experiments proved that the GO/Ag3PO4/CS coating had excellent photothermal and photodynamic properties. In vitro antibacterial experiments showed that the antibacterial rate of the GO/Ag3PO4/CS composite coating against Staphylococcus aureus reached 99.81% after 20 minutes irradiation with 808 nm near-infrared light. At the same time, the composite coating had excellent light stability, which could provide stable and sustained antibacterial effect. ConclusionGO/Ag3PO4/CS coating can be excited by 808 nm near infrared light to produce reactive oxygen species, which has excellent antibacterial activity under light.