Objective:To investigate the clinical outcome of endovascular treatment vs. drug treatment in patients with symptomatic non-acute long-segment occlusion of the internal carotid artery. Methods:Based on prospective cohort registration research data, patients with symptomatic non-acute long-segment occlusion of internal carotid artery were retrospectively included. They were divided into a drug treatment group and an endovascular treatment group according to the actual treatment received. The latter was further divided into a successful recanalization group and an unsuccessful recanalization group. The endpoint events included ipsilateral ischemic stroke, any stroke, and all-cause death. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to compare the endpoint events between groups during the perioprocedural period (within 30 days), and multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was use to compare the endpoint events between the groups during the long-term follow-up. Results:A total of 684 patients were included, of which 570 (83.33%) were male, median aged 63 years (interquartile range, 56-70 years). Three hundred and fifty-three patients (51.6%) received drug treatment; 331 (48.4%) received endovascular treatment, of which 161 (48.6%) had successful recanalization. The median follow-up time was 1 223 days (interquartile range, 646.5-2 082 days), with 109 patients (15.9%) experiencing stroke recurrence events (including 87 ipsilateral ischemic stroke) and 78 (11.4%) experiencing all-cause mortality. The risk of any stroke during the perioprocedural period in the successful recanalization group was significantly higher than that in the drug treatment group (odds ratio 3.679, 95% confidence interval 1.038-13.036; P=0.044), but the risk of ipsilateral ischemic stroke recurrence (risk ratio 0.347, 95% confidence interval 0.152-0.791; P=0.012) and all-cause mortality (risk ratio 0.239, 95% confidence interval 0.093-0.618; P=0.003) during the long-term follow-up were significantly lower than those in the drug treatment group. Conclusions:In patients with symptomatic non-acute long-segment occlusion of the internal carotid artery, endovascular treatment can increase the risk of stroke recurrence within 30 days, but successful recanalization can reduce the risks of long-term ipsilateral ischemic stroke recurrence and all-cause mortality.

Approximately 8%to 15%of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer(mCRC)harbor BRAF mutation,and the V600E mutation is the most common form of BRAF mutation.The prognosis of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer harboring BRAF V600E mutation is poor.Initial standard chemotherapy is often ineffective,necessitating an intensive follow-up treatment,which usually provides limited effic-acy.Consequently,the disease becomes notably difficult to treat and progresses rapidly,resulting in a decreased overall patient survival rate.This review details the research advancements in treatment of BRAF V600E-mutant metastatic colorectal cancer.

Objective:To investigate predictive factors for successful endovascular recanalization in patients with non-acute symptomatic internal carotid artery occlusion (SICAO), to develop a decision tree model using the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) algorithm, and to evaluate the predictive performance of the model.Methods:Patients with non-acute SICAO received endovascular therapy at 8 comprehensive stroke centers in China were included retrospectively. They were randomly assigned to a training set and a validation set. In the training set, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) algorithm was used to screen important variables, and a decision tree prediction model was constructed based on CART algorithm. The model was evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test and confusion matrix in the validation set.Results:A total of 511 patients with non-acute SICAO were included. They were randomly divided into a training set ( n=357) and a validation set ( n=154) in a 7:3 ratio. The successful recanalization rates after endovascular therapy were 58.8% and 58.4%, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference ( χ2=0.007, P=0.936). A CART decision tree model consisting of 5 variables, 5 layers and 9 classification rules was constructed using the six non-zero-coefficient variables selected by LASSO regression. The predictive factors for successful recanalization included fewer occluded segments, proximal tapered stump, ASITN/SIR collateral grading of 1-2, ischemic stroke, and a recent event to endovascular therapy time of 1-30 d. ROC analysis showed that the area under curve of the decision tree model in the training set was 0.810 (95% confidence interval 0.764-0.857), and the optimal cut-off value for predicting successful recanalization was 0.71. The area under curve in the validation set was 0.763 (95% confidence interval 0.687-0.839). The accuracy was 70.1%, precision was 81.4%, sensitivity was 63.3%, and specificity was 79.7%. The Hosmer-Lemeshow test in both groups showed P>0.05. Conclusion:Based on the type of ischemic event, the time from the latest event to endovascular therapy, proximal stump morphology, the number of occluded segments, and the ASITN/SIR collateral grading constructed the decision tree model can effectively predict successful recanalization after non-acute SICAO endovascular therapy.

Objective:To investigate the influencing factors, periprocedural complications, and long-term outcomes of successful recanalization after endovascular treatment in patients with non-acute symptomatic internal carotid artery occlusion.Methods:Patients with non-acute internal carotid artery occlusion received endovascular treatment in the Nanjing Stroke Registration System between January 2010 and December 2021 were retrospectively enrolled. Clinical endpoint events were defined as successful vascular recanalization, periprocedural complications (symptomatic embolism and symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage), neurological function improvement, and recurrence of ipsilateral ischemic events. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the independent influencing factors of successful vascular recanalization. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to investigate the correlation between endovascular treatment outcomes and neurological function improvement, as well as ipsilateral ischemic cerebrovascular events. Results:A total of 296 patients were included, of which 190 (64.2%) were successfully recanalized. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that symptoms manifest as ischemic stroke (odds ratio [ OR] 3.353, 95% confidence interval [ CI] 1.399-8.038; P=0.007), the time from the most recent symptom onset to endovascular therapy within 1 to 30 d ( OR 2.327, 95% CI 1.271-4.261; P=0.006), proximal conical residual cavity ( OR 2.853, 95% CI 1.242-6.552; P=0.013) and focal occlusion (C1-C2: OR 3.255, 95% CI 1.296-8.027, P=0.012; C6/C7: OR 5.079, 95% CI 1.334-19.334; P=0.017) were the independent influencing factors for successful vascular recanalization. Successful recanalization did not increase the risk of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage within 7 d after procedure (3.2% vs. 0.9%; P=0.428). The median follow-up time after procedure was 38 months. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed that after adjusting for confounding factors, successful recanalization was significantly associated with postprocedural neurological improvement (hazard ratio 1.608, 95% CI 1.091-2.371; P=0.017), and significantly reduced the risk of recurrence of long-term ischemic events (hazard ratio 0.351, 95% CI 0.162-0.773; P=0.010). Conclusion:In patients with non-acute internal carotid artery occlusion, successful endovascular recanalization can effectively reduce the risk of long-term ischemic events without increasing the risk of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage.

ObjectiveTo investigate the effect of high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) combined with rehabilitation robot on upper limb and hand dysfunction in patients with subacute stroke. MethodsFrom December, 2019 to December, 2021, 50 inpatients with subacute stroke in Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital were randomly divided into control group (n = 25) and experimental group (n = 25). Both groups received routine rehabilitation therapy, while the control group added sham HD-tDCS combined with rehabilitation robot, and the experimental group added HD-tDCS combined with rehabilitation robot, for four weeks. The upper limb and hand function was assessed with Action Research Arm Test (ARAT), Fugl-Meyer Assessment-Upper Extremities (FMA-UE) and Motor Assessment Scale (MAS) before and after treatment. ResultsAfter treatment, the scores of ARAT, FMA-UE and MAS increased in the two groups (∣Z∣ > 3.320, t > 6.379, P < 0.01), while the scores of FMA-UE and MAS were higher in the experimental group than in the control group (Z = -2.379, t = 3.181, P < 0.05), as well as the scores of grasping and gross motor of ARAT (∣Z∣ > 2.033, P < 0.05). ConclusionThe combination of HD-tDCS and rehabilitation robot can be more effective on upper limb and hand function in patients with subacute stroke than rehabilitation robot alone.

Brain functional network changes over time along with the process of brain development, disease, and aging. However, most of the available measurements for evaluation of the difference (or similarity) between the individual brain functional networks are for charactering static networks, which do not work with the dynamic characteristics of the brain networks that typically involve a long-span and large-scale evolution over the time. The current study proposes an index for measuring the similarity of dynamic brain networks, named as dynamic network similarity (DNS). It measures the similarity by combining the "evolutional" and "structural" properties of the dynamic network. Four sets of simulated dynamic networks with different evolutional and structural properties (varying amplitude of changes, trend of changes, distribution of connectivity strength, range of connectivity strength) were generated to validate the performance of DNS. In addition, real world imaging datasets, acquired from 13 stroke patients who were treated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), were used to further validate the proposed method and compared with the traditional similarity measurements that were developed for static network similarity. The results showed that DNS was significantly correlated with the varying amplitude of changes, trend of changes, distribution of connectivity strength and range of connectivity strength of the dynamic networks. DNS was able to appropriately measure the significant similarity of the dynamics of network changes over the time for the patients before and after the tDCS treatments. However, the traditional methods failed, which showed significantly differences between the data before and after the tDCS treatments. The experiment results demonstrate that DNS may robustly measure the similarity of evolutional and structural properties of dynamic networks. The new method appears to be superior to the traditional methods in that the new one is capable of assessing the temporal similarity of dynamic functional imaging data.
Aging/physiology* ; Brain/physiology* ; Brain Mapping ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods* ; Nerve Net/physiology* ; Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation/methods*

Objective:To identify the morphological features and clinical significance of intra-vascular thrombus in carotid stenosis using optical coherence tomography (OCT).Methods:Twelve patients with carotid artery thrombosis detected by OCT assessment in Jinling Hospital between January 2017 and January 2020 were included. Serial area measurements within the athero-thrombotic target lesion were performed to evaluate the OCT-thrombus score, length, area and volume. The clinical data and plaque morphological features were also assessed.Results:Among the 12 patients demonstrating thrombus on OCT, eight patients presented with white thrombus, two patients presented with red thrombus, and another two patients displayed both white thrombus and red thrombus. OCT-thrombus scores were 1-32. The OCT-thrombus score was correlated to the OCT-thrombus volume ( ρ=0.739, P=0.006) and the thrombus length ( ρ=0.932, P<0.001). All lesions were presented with fibrous cap disruption, and 10 lesions were presented with thin-cap fibroatheroma. In view of the OCT findings, all patients received carotid balloon angioplasty and stent implantation. During an average follow-up of 14.2 months, none of the 12 patients had fatal stroke or recurrent ischemic stroke. Conclusions:OCT can be used to assess intra-carotid thrombus and its more detailed morphological characteristics, offering more possibilities in quantitative analysis of thrombus burden.

Objective:To explore the research and teaching ability of rehabilitation in medical institutions at different levels in Zhejiang province, for better guiding and promoting of rehabilitation medicine.Methods:90 public hospitals in Zhejiang province were surveyed by Zhejiang Rehabilitation Center from May to August during 2019, to collect information of the research papers, research project applications, patents and monographs of each rehabilitation medicine department in the past five years, as well as the teaching and training activities in 2018.Results:Among the 90 hospitals surveyed, 86 hospitals had rehabilitation medicine departments. In the past five years, 86 hospitals published 636 papers in core journals, 120 SCI/EI papers, and applied for 19 national projects, 40 provincial projects, and 204 bureau level projects, and applied for 25 invention patents and 40 utility model patents, and edited 19 monographs. The average research capacity of rehabilitation including research paper, research project application, patent invention and monograph preparation in tertiary hospitals was significantly better than that of secondary general hospitals in recent 5 years. No SCI/EI papers have been published in the secondary hospital in the past 5 years, and no national project has been awarded. The proportion of SCI/EI papers published by tertiary hospitals was 92.5% (111/120). More teaching work was conducted by tertiary hospitals.Conclusions:The research and teaching ability of rehabilitation in public hospitals of Zhejiang province has reached a certain scale, but there is still a long way to go with other subjects. It is suggested that we should take the opportunity of development of great health and great rehabilitation, different levels of rehabilitation institutions should take their advantages to carry out scientific research and teaching training at different levels. Combined with the three-level rehabilitation network, a number of rehabilitation development measures such as linkage between the upper and the lower levels, mutual assistance in scientific research and integration in teaching should be implemented.

Objective:To evaluate the characteristics of carotid plaque and the immediate outcomes after carotid artery stenting (CAS) in diabetic and non-diabetic patients by optical coherence tomography (OCT).Methods:Patients underwent CAS and OCT before and after operation in the Department of Neurology, Jinling Hospital from January 2014 to March 2019 were enrolled retrospectively. The clinical features, the characteristics of carotid plaque on OCT and the immediate outcomes after CAS were compared between diabetic group and non-diabetic group. The risk factors of stent malapposition were analyzed.Results:A total of 46 patients were enrolled. Their age was 64.02±8.32 years and 41 were males (89.1%). There were 20 patients (43.5%) in the diabetes group and 26 (56.5%) in the non-diabetes group. The proportions of atherosclerotic plaque with thin fibrous cap (40.0% vs. 7.7%; χ2=5.166, P=0.023), plaque rupture (55.0% vs. 23.1%; χ2=4.945, P=0.026) and macrophage infiltration (60.0% vs. 30.8%; χ2=3.930, P=0.047) in the diabetic group were significantly higher than those in the non-diabetic group. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that older age (odds ratio [ OR] 1.208, 95% confidence interval [ CI] 1.033-1.413; P=0.018), coronary heart disease ( OR 15.953, 95% CI 1.142-222.952; P=0.040), alcohol consumption ( OR 6.192, 95% CI 1.098-34.923; P=0.039) and lower systolic blood pressure ( OR 0.944, 95% CI 0.894-0.997; P=0.037) were independently associated with stent malaposition. Conclusion:Compared with the non-diabetic patients, carotid plaque in diabetic patients may be more unstable. Older age, coronary heart disease, alcohol consumption and lower systolic blood pressure were associated with stent malaposition after carotid stenting. OCT can reveal the characteristics of carotid plaque and the immediate outcomes after CAS, which can provide strong evidence for treatment decision.

Objective:To validate the predictive function of Field Assessment Stroke Triage for Emergency Destination (FAST-ED) score on large vessel occlusion (LVO) in Chinese population.Methods:The information about the patients who had the disease onset within 24 hours, were treated in the Emergency Department of Jinling Hospital, and diagnosed as ‘acute ischemic stroke’ was collected. Via the emergent brain computed tomography angiography or digital subtraction angiography, the patients were divided into LVO group and non-LVO group. The scores of FAST-ED were calculated according to the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores and compared with Rapid Arterial oCclusion Evaluation (RACE), 3-item Stroke Scale (3I-SS), Cincinnati Stroke Triage Assessment Tool (C-STAT), and Prehospital Acute Stroke Scale (PASS) scores. Moreover, the patients were further divided into anterior and posterior circulation lesion groups to explore whether the FAST-ED scale can differ the anterior or posterior circulation effectively.Results:Three hundred and eighty-one patients were eventually included, among whom 284 were diagnosed as LVO, and 97 were diagnosed as non-LVO. Receiver operating characteristic curves showed that cut-off value of 4 optimized the scale (sensitivity: 0.76, specificity: 0.69, area under the curve: 0.78). The area under the curve of FAST-ED score(0.78) showed no statistically significant difference with NIHSS (0.79), RACE (0.77), 3I-SS (0.78) and C-STAT scores (0.75), and exhibited statistically significant difference with PASS score (0.74; 95% CI 0.69-0.78, P=0.01). FAST-ED score showed no statistically significant difference in predicting anterior and posterior circulation lesions. Conclusions:FAST-ED score can predict LVO in a rather accurate manner. It can predict anterior and posterior circulation lesions with similar effectiveness. So FAST-ED is able to be a prehospital screening tool and make assistance to the prehospital treatment.