Delayed presentation of a pneumatic nail gun injury to the right ventricle without circulatory compromise.

Delayed presentation of penetrating cardiac injuries is exceedingly rare due to the observed near 100% pre-hospital mortality. We describe a case of a patient who presented for evaluation nearly 24 h after sustaining a self-inflicted pneumatic nail gun injury to the right ventricular outflow tract. Remarkably, the patient had no evidence of hemodynamic compromise. This case highlights the importance of maintaining a high index of suspicion for cardiac injury with penetrating trauma to the cardiac box regardless of presenting signs and symptoms, and the value of adhering to advanced trauma life support principles.

Quantitative determination of nicotinic acid in micro liter volume of urine sample by drop-to-drop solvent microextraction coupled to matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry.

Drop-to-drop solvent microextraction (DDSME) coupled with matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) for quantitative determination of nicotinic acid in one drop of urine sample has been proposed. All parameters, such as type of organic solvent, extraction time, exposure volume solvent, pH of the sample solution that affecting the separation and preconcentration of nicotinic acid were investigated. Under the optimal conditions, the detection limit of the method was 20 ng mL(-1) and the relative standard deviations (RSD) for determination of the nicotinic acid were in the range of 8.0-12.5%. The calculated calibration curves gave linearity in the range of 80-1000 ng mL(-1). The main advantages of the proposed method are simple, fast, and small amount of sample solution is used for separation and preconcentration of nicotinic acid. This method could be also useful for the analysis of other interested analytes in small volume of biological samples, like plasma, saliva and urine, where the availability of samples are limited.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry for quantitative determination of ß-blocker drugs in one-drop of human serum sample.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) has been applied for the quantitative determination of ß-blocker drugs in one-drop of human serum samples using drop-to-drop solvent microextraction (DDSME) as a preconcentrating probe. The optimum experimental conditions for ß-blocker drugs were investigated and 1.8 µL volume of toluene for 10 min extraction time with the 5% addition of NaCl under pH 11.0 was found to be the best conditions for the separation and preconcentration of drugs from 30 µL of serum sample from a patient with high blood pressure. The optimized methodologies for DDSME/MALDI-MS analyses exhibited a good linearity with intra- and inter day precision value of 8.5-10.5% and 9.4-12.6%, respectively. The proposed DDSME/MALDI-MS offers a very simple, rapid and low-cost technique for the determination of ß-blocker drugs in one drop of serum sample. The reported method has been successfully applied for the determination of propranolol and nadolol in small volume of serum sample from patient suffering from high blood pressure. In future, this technique could be applied for pharmacokinetic and clinical studies.

Separation and preconcentration of trace level of lead in one drop of blood sample by using graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry.

Drop-to-drop solvent microextraction (DDSME) assisted with ultrasonication is applied for the determination of lead in one drop (30 microL) of blood sample by using graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF-AAS). The optimum extraction efficiency of lead was observed for 10 min extraction time at pH 5.0 with 2 microL of organic solvent that containing 0.5 M of Cyanex-302. The optimized methodology exhibited good linearity in the range of 0.3-30.0 ng mL(-1) lead with relative standard deviations (RSD) from 2.5 to 4.4%. The method is found to be simple and rapid for the analysis of lead in micro amount of blood sample with the limit of detection (LOD) of 0.08 ng mL(-1). The application of the proposed method has been successfully tested for the determination of lead in blood samples. The results showed that under the optimized experimental conditions, the method showed good sensitivity and recovery %, as well as advantages such as linearity, simplicity, low cost and high feasibility.