BACKGROUND: As a novel procedure in minimally invasive spine surgery (MISS), percutaneous laser disc decompression(PLDD) has been applied widely in the recent development in clinical practices.OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to evaluate the influences of PLDD on the stability in cervical spinal constructs.DESIGN: A before-after comparison trail based on patients.SETTING: The experiment was performed at the spine surgery department of a hospital affiliated to a university.PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-eight patients who were diagnosed as lateral cervical disc herniation at the Spine Surgery Department of Shenzhen People' s Hospital, Second Hospital Affiliated to Jinan University were involved from October 2001 to April 2003. Of all of the patients, 17 were male and 11 were female. They have 29 cervical disc protrusions altogether.INTERVENTIONS: Monitored by X-ray, a 400 μm fixed optical fiber was introduced into the injured intervertebral disc via a 9-gauge flexible trocar through an anterior cervical approach. An Nd-YAG laser system,with a 1 060 nm wavelength and an output power of 15W, was employed to ablate or decompress the inner disc tissue. The disc tissue was exposedto 500- 950 J laser powers.MAIN OUTCOME MMEASURES: Before and 6 months after the PLDD, the deviation of adjacent vertebra displacements was observed and changings of the wedge angles of the intervertebral discs were calculated respectively.RESULTS: The deviation of adjacent vertebra displacements showed no significant difference between before and after operation, when the patients were examined with a more flexed-position or a more extended-position(t=0.811 7-0.827 2, P＞ 0.05), and no significant changes in the wedge angles of the intervertebral discs could be observed either(t=0.768 7-0.827 1,P ＞ 0.05).CONCLUSION: Applying percutaneous laser disc decompression to lateral cervical disc herniation has many advantages, such as simplicity of operation, minimal invasion and having no impact on the stability in cervical spinal constructs.

Nowadays, the massive medical data have already influenced the information construction in medical institutes, so it is not enough to solely rely on traditional local storage system to solve the problems like the read/write speed, visualization, and economy brought about by the massive data. Furthermore, various medical cloud services have been developed at home and abroad that patients' medical data can be shared through all medical institutes on the cloud, which makes a higher demand on the transmission speed of the medical data. This article analyzes from multiple aspects like high availability and costs by performing a medical image transmission speed test on the three mainstream storage technologies to provide an optional storage system for future medical image big data in the access process. The experimental result shows that it can be found that in the process of accessing medical image big data, the access speed and performance of object storage system is better than those of the existing local storage systems. However, with comprehensive consideration, it is recommended that the distributed file storage system like HDFS be the first choice for the storage system of the medical images.
Cloud Computing ; Computer Communication Networks ; Humans ; Information Storage and Retrieval ; Technology

Objective:To investigate the risk factors of systolic dysfunction early complicated in patients with isolated traumatic brain injury (iTBI) and to evaluate the influence of complicated systolic dysfunction on the prognosis of iTBI patients.Methods:From January 2017 to October 2018, 123 patients with moderate or severe iTBI admitted to Trauma Centre in our hospital were included in the study, and patients with previous cardiovascular diseases were excluded. Left ventricular systolic function was assessed by transthoracic echocardiography within 24 h after admission. The patients were divided into normal systolic function group ( n=100) and systolic dysfunction group ( n=23) according to the results of echocardiography. Data were collected from all patients on admission, including GCS score, systolic blood pressure, heart rate, high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT), clinical treatment variables (use of sedative drugs, vasoactive drugs, etc.), craniotomy or not and clinical outcomes (survival or death) during hospitalization. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the related factors for iTBI patients complicated with systolic dysfunction, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn to evaluate the predictive value of each index for iTBI patients complicated with cardiac insufficiency. Results:The systolic blood pressure (147.3±23.3) mmHg, the heart rate (96.1±26.3) beats/min and the hs-cTnT level (16.48±8.17) pg/mL in the systolic dysfunction group were higher than those in the normal systolic function group on admission (all P<0.05); and the GCS score in the systolic dysfunction group was lower than that in the normal systolic function group ( P<0.05). Logistic regression analysis showed that the heart rate ( OR=1.129, 95% CI: 1.001-1.516; P=0.038), the GCS score ( OR=0.640, 95% CI: 0.445-0.920; P=0.016) and the hs-cTnT level ( OR=1.054, 95% CI: 1.009-1.101; P=0.002) on admission were independent risk factors for iTBI patients complicated with systolic dysfunction. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of the hs-cTnT levelon admission was the largest (AUC=0.863, P<0.01). The in-hospital mortality of patients in the systolic dysfunction group was higher than that of patients in the normal systolic function group (52.5% vs 22%, P=0.004). Conclusions:The heart rate, the GCS score and the serum hs-cTnT level on admission were independent risk factors for iTBI patients complicated with systolic dysfunction. The hs-cTnT level could better predict the occurrence of cardiac systolic dysfuncion, and higher in-hospital mortality was found in iTBI patients complicated with systolic dysfunction. Therefore, early detection and timely intervention may improve the prognosis of these patients.

A clinical information navigation system based on 3D human body model is designed. The system extracts the key information of diagnosis and treatment of patients by searching the historical medical records, and stores the focus information in a predefined structured patient instance. In addition, the rule mapping is established between the patient instance and the three-dimensional human body model, the focus information is visualized on the three-dimensional human body model, and the trend curve can be drawn according to the change of the focus, meanwhile, the key diagnosis and treatment information and the original report reference function are provided. The system can support the analysis, storage and visualization of various types of reports, improve the efficiency of doctors' retrieval of patient information, and reduce the treatment time.
Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted ; Humans ; Medical Informatics Applications ; Models, Anatomic ; Software

Air flow and particle-particle/wall impacts are considered as two primary dispersion mechanisms for dry powder inhalers (DPIs). Hence, an understanding of these mechanisms is critical for the development of DPIs. In this study, a coupled DEM-CFD (discrete element method-computational fluid dynamics) is employed to investigate the influence of air flow on the dispersion performance of the carrier-based DPI formulations. A carrier-based agglomerate is initially formed and then dispersed in a uniformed air flow. It is found that air flow can drag API particles away from the carrier and those in the downstream air flow regions are prone to be dispersed. Furthermore, the influence of the air velocity and work of adhesion are also examined. It is shown that the dispersion number (i.e., the number of API particles detached from the carrier) increases with increasing air velocity, and decreases with increasing the work of adhesion, indicating that the DPI performance is controlled by the balance of the removal and adhesive forces. It is also shown that the cumulative Weibull distribution function can be used to describe the DPI performance, which is governed by the ratio of the fluid drag force to the pull-off force.