Objective To investigate the value of self-made minimally invasive cancellous bone harvester.Methods From February 2007 to October 2008,cancellous bones of 35 cases were obtained by the self-made minimally invasive cancellous bone harvester from the area between the point 1 cm posterior to the anterior superior iliac spine and the tubercle of iliac crest.ResultsThe average amount of harvested bone is 2.37 cm3(range 1-4 cm3).The operation time ranged 3-5 min,and the blood loss was 1-2 ml.The incidence rate of complications was 5.7%(2/35).Conclusions The minimally invasive bone harvester is safe and reliable.It can be used for some bone grafting surgeries.

Objective To investigate the expression of Wnt-5a gene in primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and to expose its role and clinical significance in the development of HCC.Methods Real time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed in 26 fresh HCC samples and the corresponding para-carcinoma tissues to detect mRNA expression of Wnt-5a gene.Wnt-5a protein was detected with immunohistochemical method in paraffin embedding tissues of 85 cases of HCCs and the corresponding para-carcinoma tissues,and 15 cases of hepatic cirrhosis.Results RT-PCR analysis showed that Wnt-5a mRNA (0.102 127 ±0.158 620) in the HCC tissues was more than that (0.020 106 ±0.022 075) in the para-carcinoma tissues (P＜0.05).The positive expression rate of Wnt-5a protein in HCC,para-carcinoma,and hepatic cirrhosis tissues were 21.2％ (18/85),81.26％ (69/85),and 86.7％ (13/15),respectively.The positive rate of Wnt-5a was significantly lower in the HCC than in the para-carcinoma and hepatic cirrhosis tissues (P ＜ 0.01).The expression of Wnt-5a was significantly associated with lower tumor node metastasis (TNM) stages and small alpha fetoproteins (AFP) content of blood serum (P ＜0.05).Conclusions The high expression of Wnt-5a mRNA was found in the gene transcription of HCC,while Wnt-5a protein was absent or low in HCC.It was suggested that the roles of Wnt-5a was interfered at the protein level rather than the transcriptional level in the HCC.

Background: A small shift in high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) assays can lead to different result interpretation and consequent patient management. We explored whether a small bias could be detected using conventional internal quality control (QC) procedures, evaluated the performance of moving average (MA)-based QC procedures, and proposed a new QC procedure based on the moving rate (MR) of positive patient results of hs-cTnT assays. Methods: The ability of conventional QC to detect a 5 ng/L bias was examined using the 1 3s/ 22s/R4s multi-rule procedure as deviation rules.We developed MA and MR procedures for the hs-cTnT assay using eight months of patient data. The performance of different MA or MR procedures was investigated by calculating the median number of patient samples affected until a bias introduced into the dataset was detected (MNPed). After comparing the MNPed across different procedures, we selected an optimal MA or MR procedure for validation. Validation graphs were plotted using the minimum, median, and maximum number of results affected until bias detection. Results: Our conventional QC procedures could not detect a positive bias of 5 ng/L. When a positive bias was introduced, MNPed was much higher using MA than using MR, with cut-off values of 5 ng/L and 14 ng/L, respectively. MR validation charts for optimal procedures provided insight into the MR performance. Conclusions The MR procedure could detect different errors with few false alarms. In the hs-cTnT assay, the MR procedure with a smaller cut-off value outperformed MA and conventional QC procedures for small bias detection.