Purpose: In the Tokyo Guidelines 2018 (TG18), emergency laparoscopic cholecystectomy is recognized as a crucial early treatment option for acute cholecystitis. However, early laparoscopic intervention in patients with moderate-to-severe acute cholecystitis or those with severe comorbidities may increase the risk of complications. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated the association between early laparoscopic cholecystectomy and percutaneous transhepatic gallbladder drainage (PTGBD) in moderate-to-severe acute cholecystitis patients. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 835 TG18 grade II or III acute cholecystitis patients who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy at 4 tertiary medical centers in the Republic of Korea. Patients were classified into 2 groups according to whether PTGBD was performed before surgery, and their short-term postoperative outcomes were analyzed retrospectively. Results: The patients were divided into 2 groups, and 1:1 propensity score matching was conducted to establish the PTGBD group (n = 201) and the early laparoscopic cholecystectomy group (n = 201). The PTGBD group experienced significantly higher rates of preoperative systemic inflammatory response syndrome (24.9% vs. 6.5%, P < 0.001), pneumonia (7.5% vs.3.0%, P = 0.045), and cardiac disease (67.2% vs. 57.7%, P = 0.041) than the early operation group. However, there was no difference in biliary complication (hazard ratio, 1.103; 95% confidence interval, 0.519–2.343; P = 0.799) between the PTGBD group and early laparoscopic cholecystectomy group. Conclusion In most cases of moderate-to-severe cholecystitis, early laparoscopic cholecystectomy was relatively feasible.However, PTGBD should be considered if patients have the risk factor of underlying disease when experiencing general anesthesia.

Objective: To investigate differences in the relative sizes of the ankle-stabilizing muscles in individuals with versus without flexible flat feet and to determine predictors of symptom severity. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 30 patients with symptomatic flexible flat feet and 24 normal controls. The following were evaluated: foot posture index, resting calcaneal stance position angle, radiographic findings (calcaneal pitch, Meary’s angle, talocalcaneal angle, talonavicular coverage angle [TNCA]), foot function index (FFI), and cross-sectional areas (CSA) of the tibialis anterior (TA), tibialis posterior (TP), and peroneus longus (PL) upon ultrasonographic examination. To address morphometric differences among participants, individual muscle measurements were normalized to proportions of total muscle CSA. Between-group differences were evaluated with independent t-tests. Correlations between muscle ratios, radiographic parameters, and FFI scores were investigated. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine which parameters predicted severe symptoms. Results: The relative size of the TP was significantly greater and those of the TA and PL were significantly smaller in patients with flat feet than in normal controls. Correlations were found among relative muscle CSA ratios, radiographic parameters, and FFI score. Linear regression analysis confirmed that the TNCA and the relative CSA of the PL were independent predictors of symptom severity. Conclusion This study found significant differences in the relative CSAs of the ankle muscles in patients with flexible flat feet versus individuals without flat feet; these differences were significantly correlated with anatomic abnormalities. Symptoms were more severe in patients with relatively greater forefoot abduction and relatively smaller PL.

Objective: To investigate differences in the relative sizes of the ankle-stabilizing muscles in individuals with versus without flexible flat feet and to determine predictors of symptom severity. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 30 patients with symptomatic flexible flat feet and 24 normal controls. The following were evaluated: foot posture index, resting calcaneal stance position angle, radiographic findings (calcaneal pitch, Meary’s angle, talocalcaneal angle, talonavicular coverage angle [TNCA]), foot function index (FFI), and cross-sectional areas (CSA) of the tibialis anterior (TA), tibialis posterior (TP), and peroneus longus (PL) upon ultrasonographic examination. To address morphometric differences among participants, individual muscle measurements were normalized to proportions of total muscle CSA. Between-group differences were evaluated with independent t-tests. Correlations between muscle ratios, radiographic parameters, and FFI scores were investigated. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine which parameters predicted severe symptoms. Results: The relative size of the TP was significantly greater and those of the TA and PL were significantly smaller in patients with flat feet than in normal controls. Correlations were found among relative muscle CSA ratios, radiographic parameters, and FFI score. Linear regression analysis confirmed that the TNCA and the relative CSA of the PL were independent predictors of symptom severity. Conclusion This study found significant differences in the relative CSAs of the ankle muscles in patients with flexible flat feet versus individuals without flat feet; these differences were significantly correlated with anatomic abnormalities. Symptoms were more severe in patients with relatively greater forefoot abduction and relatively smaller PL.

This paper describes a community effort to improve earlier versions of the full-text corpus of Genomics & Informatics by semi-automatically detecting and correcting PDF-to-text conversion errors and optical character recognition errors during the first hackathon of Genomics & Informatics Annotation Hackathon (GIAH) event. Extracting text from multi-column biomedical documents such as Genomics & Informatics is known to be notoriously difficult. The hackathon was piloted as part of a coding competition of the ELTEC College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University in order to enable researchers and students to create or annotate their own versions of the Genomics & Informatics corpus, to gain and create knowledge about corpus linguistics, and simultaneously to acquire tangible and transferable skills. The proposed projects during the hackathon harness an internal database containing different versions of the corpus and annotations.

This paper describes a community effort to improve earlier versions of the full-text corpus of Genomics & Informatics by semi-automatically detecting and correcting PDF-to-text conversion errors and optical character recognition errors during the first hackathon of Genomics & Informatics Annotation Hackathon (GIAH) event. Extracting text from multi-column biomedical documents such as Genomics & Informatics is known to be notoriously difficult. The hackathon was piloted as part of a coding competition of the ELTEC College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University in order to enable researchers and students to create or annotate their own versions of the Genomics & Informatics corpus, to gain and create knowledge about corpus linguistics, and simultaneously to acquire tangible and transferable skills. The proposed projects during the hackathon harness an internal database containing different versions of the corpus and annotations.

Symptomatic neuromas after amputation can be troublesome to treat and make it difficult to properly fit a brace. Surgical management is required when conservative management such as prosthetic socket modification or local injections fail. However, small cutaneous nerves adhere to adjacent soft tissue and they are difficult to locate. The authors suggest that ultrasonography guided tattoo localization using a charcoal suspension is useful to find a visually indistinguishable neuroma.

BACKGROUND: Based on outstanding progresses in animal experiments, vaccines for some human tumors have been developed. However, clinical effects of these vaccines have been far below than expected. This discrepancy might come from differences between animal models and human patients with respect to immunocompetency. The immune status of mice after tumor inoculation has not been well studied, which make us cautious in interpreting and applying the results from mice to human. We evaluated cell-mediated immune responses in mice after tumor cell inoculation. METHODS: Mice were inoculated with TA3Ha, CT26, or 4T1. Delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) responses were induced 2-4 weeks after inoculation using 2,4-dinitro-1-fluorobenzene as an antigen. The relationships between the severity of DTH responses and the duration of tumor inoculation or the size of tumor mass were analyzed. RESULTS: In TA3Ha groups, DTH response was elevated 2 weeks after inoculation, but depressed after 4 weeks, compared to the control group. When analyzed based on the sizes of tumor masses elicited, DTH responses were inversely related to the mass size, especially in those greater than 10 mm in diameter. In CT26 groups, while the duration after inoculation did not affect the severity of DTH responses, those with large mass showed depressed responses regardless the duration of inoculation. 4T1 cells grew so slowly that the size of tumor mass was small even 4 weeks after inoculation, and this group showed much higher DTH responses compared to that of tumor-free group. CONCLUSION: At least in an experimental setting where tumor model was induced by inoculating tumor cell lines into immunologically competent mice, the host immune response was elevated in early stage, and then depressed in late stage when the mass grew over a critical size.
Animal Experimentation ; Animals ; Cell Line, Tumor ; Humans ; Hypersensitivity* ; Mice* ; Models, Animal ; Vaccines