Objective To evaluate the diagnostic value of conventional ultrasound and ultrasonic elastography (UE) in differentiating benign and malignant hepatic lesions.Methods One hundred and forty-five patients with 159 hepatic tumors were included in the study.Conventional ultrasound scan and UE were performed on each patient.Pathological results were as the golden standard.The diagnostic performance of the 2 methods were evaluated with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the interobserver agreements were analysed.Results A better interobserver agreement was achieved in UE (κ =0.325 at conventional ultrasound versus κ =0.782 at UE).The area under ROC curve of conventional ultrasound,ultrasonic elastography and the combination of both methods were 0.76,0.77 and 0.87,respectively.After the combination of the 2 methods,the sensitivity and accuracy could be enhanced significantly ( P ＜0.05).Conclusions Conventional ultrasound combined with UE may be more helpful in differentiating malignant from benign hepatic tumors.

A patent cardiac support system which is used as a bridge treatment for acute myocardial infarction has been designed and tested in vitro and in two dogs in vivo. This is an easy-to-use intelligentized pulsatile flow cardiopulmonary bypass device to replace the function of heart. The device consists of two identical pumps and perfusion chambers, a sensing and control system, a gas exchanger between the vein and pump, two one way valves between pump and veins or arteries. Arterial pressure and EKG feedback mechanisms are used for maintaining blood pressure and coordinating the pumping activity with heart contraction. A prototype of the device was built to perform hydraulic in vitro tests with aims of verifying the new device's pumping behavior. Functional evaluation of the device was carried out by using it in a model circuit made with standard CPB components plus a mock hydraulic pipeline. This system demonstrated easy manipulation, good controllability, and provided a 65+/-2ml x beat(-1) flow volume. There was a linear correlation between peak pressure value and pulsatile frequency. In the two in vivo experiments, the primary objective was to determine whether the device could work well in dog, whether physiologic pulsatility could be achieved and whether the blood supply to heart should be sufficient during asystole status by drugs. The results suggest that all the goals have been achieved.
Animals ; Cardiopulmonary Bypass ; Computer-Aided Design ; Dogs ; Equipment Design ; Heart-Assist Devices ; Materials Testing ; Myocardial Infarction ; therapy

Objective To confirm whether strain ratio should be added after evaluation of lesions with 5-point elasticity scoring for differentiating breast lesions on ultrasonic elastography(UE).Methods Eight hundred and forty-six consecutive female patients with 1 071 breast lesions were recruited into a multicenter retrospective study,which involved 8 centers across China.All the patients underwent the UE procedure and the strain ratios were calculated.The sensitivity,specificity,accuracy,PPV and NPV were calculated for each of the two evaluation systems and the areas under the ROC curve were compared.Results The strain ratios of 559 benign lesions(2.7±1.4)and 512 malignant lesions(8.1±5.9)were significantly different (P<0.001).When the cutoff point was 3.03,strain ratio method had 81.6% sensitivity,89.7% specificity,81.7% accuracy,80.2% PPV and 84.2% NPV.The areas under the ROC curve with the strain ratio method and 5-point scoring method were 0.865 and 0.862,respectively(P =0.622).For the lesions with elasticity score 3 and 4,the areas under the ROC curve of the two Methods were 0.71 1 and 0.629, respectively(P = 0.020).Conclusions Although the two UE Methods have similar diagnostic performance,separate calculation of the strain ratios seems compulsory,especially for the lesions with elasticity score 3 and 4.

Objective: To identify and verify differentially expressed proteins in lens of nuclear cataract eyes with different axial lengths. Methods: Forty-eight nuclear cataract patients with the hardness grade Ⅲ to Ⅳ were enrolled from January 2016 to December 2017 in the east area of Xining city.The lens nucleus was obtained during extracapsular cataract extraction (ECCE) surgery.The samples were divided into six groups according to age and axial length, with 8 samples in each group.Seven normal transparent human lens nuclei were obtained from donors during corneal transplantation surgery and served as normal control.Water-soluble, water-insoluble and water-insoluble-urea-soluble protein fractions were extracted separately and merged to analyze by using 8-plex isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) labeling combined with 2D-LC/MS/MS.The data were processed with ProteinPilot software.Two technical replicates of iTRAQ analyses were carried out.Up-regulated and down-regulated proteins were selected in two replicates as candidate biomarkers.Twenty lens nuclei from 20 nulear cataract patients were divided into long axis young age group, normal axis young age group, long axis old age group and normal axis old age group.Western blot was used to confirm the most different proteins.This study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of TangDu Hospital of Air Force Medical University (TDLL2015046). Written consent was obtained from each participant. Results: Eighty proteins were identified.Six proteins were selected as differentially-expressed proteins.Sorbitol dehydrogenase (SDH) was elevated whereas beta-crystallin B2 (CRYBB2) was decreased in the long axis groups.The relative expression of SDH protein in the long axis low age group was 1.204±0.142, which was significantly higher than 0.711±0.072 in the normal axis low age group, the relative expression level of SDH in the long axis old age group was 1.092±0.334, which was significantly higher than 0.617±0.089 in the normal axis old age group, the difference was statistically significant (all at P<0.05). Conclusions The expression levels of SDH in the nuclear cataract were elevated with long axial length.SDH may be involved in the pathogenesis of axial myopia-associated nuclear cataract.