Advances in the construction of a scaffold for cardiac tissue engineering containing homogeneous and stable carbon nanotubes / 中国组织工程研究

BACKGROUND: How to efficiently and uniformly disperse carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into a tissue-engineered scaffold is crucial to construct an ideal CNTs-Polymer composite scaffold and it is also a hotspot of research in the tissue engineering. OBJECTIVE: To review the advances in the methodology progress of constructing a scaffold for cardiac tissue engineering, which contains uniformly and stably dispersed CNTs. METHODS: The Web of Science Core Collection and PubMed were searched by the first author for related papers about CNTs dispersion in the cardiac tissue engineering published from October 2004 to January 2017. The key words were "carbon nanotubes, dispersion, cardiac tissue engineering" in English. Original research papers were searched, which were screened through titles, abstracts and contents, and then reviewed. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: CNTs are easy to aggregate because of high surface area, high aspect ratio and rough surface. Thus, it is one of the key points to construct an ideal CNTs-Polymer composite scaffold that whether CNTs could be uniformly and stably dispersed in polymer scaffolds. In the cardiac tissue engineering, covalent or non-covalent surface modification of CNTs significantly enhances the uniformity and stability of CNTs in the polymer scaffolds, which is conducive to construct the uniformly and stably CNTs-dispersed scaffold for cardiac tissue engineering, leading to notable improvement in mechanical and electrical properties of engineered cardiac tissues.

Efficacy of Different Surgeries for Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors and their Effects on Perioperative Indexes and Prognosis / 昆明医科大学学报

Objective To explore the efficacy of different surgeries for gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) and their effects on perioperative indexesand prognosis. Methods 60 cases of GIST patients admitted in our hospital from October 2006 to November 2016 were selected and were divided into the study group (n =35, given the laparoscopic surgery) and the control group (n =25, given the laparotomy). The perioperative indexes, gastrointestinal function before and after operation [ (gastrin (GAS), motilin (MTL), vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) ], postoperative recurrence risk grade and complications were recorded in the two groups. Results There was no significant difference between the two groups in the operation time (P＞0.05), and the intraoperative blood loss volume and postoperative 3 d pain score in the study group were lower than those in the control group, and the postoperative exhaust time, eating time and hospital stay were shorter than those in the control group (P＜0.05). The levels of plasma GAS, MTL and VIP in the study group were higher than those in the control group after operation (P＜0.05). There was no significant difference in the postoperative recurrence risk grade and the incidence rate of complications between the two groups (P＞0.05). Conclusions Compared with the conventional laparotomy, laparoscopic surgery has better efficacy for GIST and has advantages of small trauma, mild pain and fast postoperative gastrointestinal function recovery, and it will not increase the risk of long-term recurrence and complications, therefore it has a good application prospect.