Objective To summarize the clinical characteristics of and the treatment efficacy of intracranial infections after ventriculoperitoneal shunt procedures.Methods Among the hydrocephalus patients who were treated by ventriculoperitoneal shunt from January 2013 to January 2016,there were seven cases that had an intracranial infection,but the patients and their families refused to remove shunt devices.Before the cerebrospinal fluid bacterial culture and drug sensitivity test results were available for the intracranial infection patients,their cerebrospinal fluid was drained through continuous lumbar drainage.After the bacterial culture and drug sensitivity test results had come out,they were treated with the intrathecal injection of sensitive antibiotics when necessary.Results Three patients were cured after lumbar drainage and intrathecal injection of antibiotics,showed by the follow-up six months later.One patient exhibited clinical symptoms of infection in a follow-up recheck two months later after removal of the lumbar shunt.Two patients implanted shunt devices again after the removal of the shunt devices during hospitalization.One patient died.Conclusion The lumbar drainage is an effective measure with clinical values for infections caused by not removing shunts after ventriculoperitoneal shunt procedures.

Objective:To investigate the correlation between the Type D personality and the severity of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) in patients with cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD).Methods:Consecutive patients with CSVD admitted to the Changzhou First People's Hospital between November 2020 and June 2021 were enrolled prospectively. The patients were scored on the Type D Personality Scale at admission; the scores of negative affectivity (NA) and social inhibition (SI) dimension were calculated respectively. The general data, laboratory examination data and imaging data of the patients were collected. Periventricular and deep WMHs were scored using the Fazekas visual scoring method. The total score 0-2 was defined as low-WMHs (L-WMHs), and 3-6 was defined as high-WMHs (H-WMHs). Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine the independent influencing factor of WMHs. Results:A total of 100 patients with CSVD were enrolled, including 51 males (51%), aged 67.21±9.38 years, 29 (29%) had Type D personality; 56 (56%) were in the L-WMHs group and 44 (44%) were in the H-WMHs group. Univariate analysis showed that the proportion of Type D personality, NA dimension score, the proportion of hypertension, diastolic blood pressure, triglyceride and homocysteine in the H-WMHs group were significantly higher than those in the L-WMHs group (all P<0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that NA dimension score (odds ratio [ OR] 18.351, 95% confidence interval [ CI] 2.780-121.135; P=0.003), age ( OR 1.134, 95% CI 1.039-1.238; P=0.005) and hypertension ( OR 7.771, 95% CI 1.525-39.607; P=0.014) were significantly positively correlated with the severity of WMHs, while triglycerides were significantly negatively correlated with the severity of WMHs ( OR 0.306, 95% CI 0.130-0.722; P=0.007). Conclusion:Type D personality is closely associated with the severity of WMHs in patients with CSVD.

Objective:To investigate the clinical characteristics of acute ischemic stroke with anterior circulation large vessel occlusion caused by cardioembolism (CE) and large artery atherosclerosis (LAA) and the efficacy of endovascular treatment.Methods:Patients with acute ischemic stroke caused by large vessel occlusion in anterior circulation and received endovascular treatment in the Stroke Center of the 971 st Hospital of the PLA Navy from April 2014 to April 2021 were retrospectively enrolled. The etiological classification of stroke was CE or LAA. According to the modified Rankin Scale score at 90 d after onset, the patients were divided into good outcome group (0-2) and poor outcome group (>2). The demographic and clinical data between the groups were compared. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine the independent influencing factors of clinical outcome. Results:A total of 106 patients were enrollded. Their age was 61.39±13.73 years and 70 (66.0%) were males. Seventy-four patients (69.8%) were in the CE group and 32 (30.2%) were in the LAA group. Sixty-six patients (62.3%) had good outcomes. Univariate analysis showed that there were significant differences in gender, age, smoking, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score, time from onset to femoral artery puncture, time from puncture to vascular recanalization, and the number of retrieval attempts between the CE group and the LAA group (all P<0.05), and there were no significant differences in the incidences of poor outcome, hemorrhagic transformation, and symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage. There were significant differences in systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, baseline NIHSS score, time from onset to femoral artery puncture, and blood perfusion grade after treatment between the good outcome group and the poor outcome group (all P<0.05). Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that higher systolic blood pressure (odds ratio [ OR] 1.046, 95% confidence interval [ CI] 1.014-1.078; P=0.004), higher baseline NIHSS score ( OR 1.117, 95% CI 1.037-1.203; P=0.003), longer time from onset to femoral artery puncture ( OR 1.008, 95% CI 1.001-1.015; P=0.019) and poor blood perfusion after treatment ( OR 8.042, 95% CI 1.532-42.215; P=0.014) were significantly and independently associated with the poor outcomes. Conclusions:Compared with LAA, CE do not increase the risks of hemorrhagic transformation and symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage. The safety and efficacy of the two are similar.

Objective:To construct radiomics models of micro-calcification in carotid plaques, and compare their diagnostic values.Methods:Fifty-two patients with large atherosclerotic cerebral infarction admitted to Department of Neurology, Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University from May 2017 to November 2019 were enrolled. All patients underwent conventional carotid artery Doppler ultrasound to detect carotid plaques and Micropure? ultrasound to detect micro-calcifications in the plaques. A cross-section image with maximum numbers of micro-calcifications was chosen when there were micro-calcifications in carotid plaques; otherwise, a cross-section image with the largest area of the plaque was chosen. After all images were normalized by Photoshop software, the plaques were delineated as regions of interest using MaZda 4.6 software and 283 texture features of the plaques were automatically extracted. The texture features with the strongest predictive value were selected through consistency analysis (intrclass correlation coefficient [ICC]>0.75), two-sample t-test, Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) regression. The predictive models were constructed by RandomForest (RF) and Support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. The training set and test set were divided by 7: 3 to analyze the classification accuracy. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to calculate the area under the curve (AUC) to evaluate the diagnostic values of the models. Delong test was used to compare the difference between the diagnostic values of the 2 classifiers in test set. Results:A total of 148 plaque images from 52 patients were enrolled, including 104 plaques with micro-calcification and 44 plaques without micro-calcification. Nine texture features were finally selected after ICC analysis, T test and Lasso regression: 5 image gray histogram features were mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis and 99 th percentile (Perc. 99%); 1 autoregressive model feature was Teta3, and 3 wavelet transform features were WavEnLH_s-3, WavEnLH_s-4, and WavEnLH_s-6. With RF classifier, accuracy of the diagnostic model was 0.93, enjoying AUC of 0.92; with SVM classifier, that was 0.91, enjoying AUC of 0.90; Delong test showed that the diagnostic values of the 2 classifiers in test set were significantly different ( Z=1.000, P=0.320). Conclusion:Radiomic models constructed by RF and SVM classifiers can identify micro-calcification in carotid plaques, and the 2 classifiers share equivalent diagnostic values.

Objective: To analyze the clinical effect of right subaxillary small incision approach on children with congenital heart disease (CHD). Methods: Eighty-six patients with CHD admitted to Henan Children′s Hospital from January 2015 to September 2017 were enrolled in this study.The patients were randomly divided into the control group and the observation group with 43 cases each group.The control group underwent sternal median incision, and the observation group underwent right subaxillary small incision.The total effective rate, incision satisfaction, general conditions of surgery (cardiopulmonary bypass time, operation time, aortic occlusion time, intraoperative blood loss), postoperative related conditions (thoracic drainage volume, postoperative monitoring time, postoperative assisted ventilation time, hospitalization time, hospitalization expenses), Wong-Baker facial expression scale (FPS-R) score, as well as the respiratory function index including the levels of peak inspiratory pressure (PIP) and alveolar-arterial oxygen pressure difference [p_(A-a) (O₂)]after anesthesia (T₁), after operation (T₂), at admission to intensive care unit (T₃) and before extubation (T₄) and complication rate between 2 groups were compared. Results: (1)The incision satisfaction in the observation group [90.70% (39/43 cases)] was higher than that in the control group [62.79% (27/43 cases)], and the difference was statistically significant (χ²=9.382, P=0.002). (2)There was no significant difference in the the extracorporeal circulation time, operation time and aortic block time between the two groups [observation group: (68.94±8.26) min, (2.33±0.21) h, (28.79±7.32) min; control group: (67.11±9.11) min, (2.25±0.31) h, (30.02±6.88) min] (P>0.05). (3)The intraoperative blood loss [(89.87±11.25) mL] in the observation group was less than that in the control group [(105.91±31.01) mL], which difference was statistically significant (t=3.189, P=0.002). (4)Also there was significant difference in postoperative monitoring time, postoperative assisted ventilation time, hospitalization time, thoracic drainage volume and hospitalization expenses between the two groups (the observation group: postoperative monitoring time (30.55±10.39) h, postoperative assisted ventilation time [(9.68±2.19) h, hospitalization time (9.61±2.17) d, thoracic drainage volume (90.36±26.14) mL, hospitalization expenses (36 956.15±1 097.84) yuan; the control group: (41.39±9.93) h, (12.72±3.81) h, (12.33±3.15) d, (163.24±29.36) mL and (45 271.97±1 134.55) yuan] (t=4.946, 4.536, 4.663, 12.157, 34.540, all P<0.01). (5)FPS-R scores at 1, 2, 3, 4 d postoperatively in the observation group were (4.02±0.41), (3.41±0.15), (2.55 ±0.20) and (1.16±0.27) points, while those in the control group were respectively (5.21±0.89), (5.02±0.63), (4.12±0.67) and (3.05±0.39) points, which differences were statistically significant (t=7.963, 16.302, 14.724, 26.128, all P<0.01). (6)There was no significant difference in p_(A-a) (O₂) and PIP between the two groups at T1, T2, T3 and T4 (all P>0.05). There was no significant difference in the complication rate between the observation group [6.98% (3/43 cases)] and the control group [4.65% (2/43 cases)] (χ²=0.000, P>0.05). Conclusions Right subaxillary small incision approach does not affect the respiratory function of children with CHD, which can improve the satisfaction of incision, reduce the amount of blood loss, accelerate postoperative recovery of children, relieve postoperative pain, and reduce the financial burden of parents.Besides, intra-operative proficient and accurate operations can reduce or avoid the occurrence of related complications and ensure the safety of surgery.