Estimating the Depth of Anesthesia from EEG Signals Based on a Deep Residual Shrinkage Network.

The reliable monitoring of the depth of anesthesia (DoA) is essential to control the anesthesia procedure. Electroencephalography (EEG) has been widely used to estimate DoA since EEG could reflect the effect of anesthetic drugs on the central nervous system (CNS). In this study, we propose that a deep learning model consisting mainly of a deep residual shrinkage network (DRSN) and a 1 × 1 convolution network could estimate DoA in terms of patient state index (PSI) values. First, we preprocessed the four raw channels of EEG signals to remove electrical noise and other physiological signals. The proposed model then takes the preprocessed EEG signals as inputs to predict PSI values. Then we extracted 14 features from the preprocessed EEG signals and implemented three conventional feature-based models as comparisons. A dataset of 18 patients was used to evaluate the models' performances. The results of the five-fold cross-validation show that there is a relatively high similarity between the ground-truth PSI values and the predicted PSI values of our proposed model, which outperforms the conventional models, and further, that the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient is 0.9344. In addition, an ablation experiment was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the soft-thresholding module for EEG-signal processing, and a cross-subject validation was implemented to illustrate the robustness of the proposed method. In summary, the procedure is not merely feasible for estimating DoA by mimicking PSI values but also inspired us to develop a precise DoA-estimation system with more convincing assessments of anesthetization levels.

4D attention-based neural network for EEG emotion recognition.

Electroencephalograph (EEG) emotion recognition is a significant task in the brain-computer interface field. Although many deep learning methods are proposed recently, it is still challenging to make full use of the information contained in different domains of EEG signals. In this paper, we present a novel method, called four-dimensional attention-based neural network (4D-aNN) for EEG emotion recognition. First, raw EEG signals are transformed into 4D spatial-spectral-temporal representations. Then, the proposed 4D-aNN adopts spectral and spatial attention mechanisms to adaptively assign the weights of different brain regions and frequency bands, and a convolutional neural network (CNN) is utilized to deal with the spectral and spatial information of the 4D representations. Moreover, a temporal attention mechanism is integrated into a bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) to explore temporal dependencies of the 4D representations. Our model achieves state-of-the-art performances on both DEAP, SEED and SEED-IV datasets under intra-subject splitting. The experimental results have shown the effectiveness of the attention mechanisms in different domains for EEG emotion recognition.

Iodine-125 seed implantation combined with arterial chemoembolization therapy for pain palliation in metastatic bone cancer: a retrospective study.

Bone metastases are the most common sites for malignant tumors. Patients who failed to respond to initial first-line treatment with bisphosphonates usually suffer from extreme pain. The aim of this study was to observe the efficacy of arterial chemoembolization combined with Iodine-125 seed implantation in the treatment of bone metastatic cancer pain. All 14 patients with metastatic bone tumor wo failed first-line treatment underwent arterial chemoembolization the day before the implantation of the particles. A computer stereoscopic TPS was used to design the treatment plans, the number and dose of particles required for implantation. Pain relief was evaluated using several parameters such as Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and Verbal Rating Scales (VRS). Pain intensity was measured pre-operation and 1-week, 1-month, 3-month after the treatment. Meanwhile, we also assessed tumor size using computer tomography (CT). Pain palliation was observed in 35.7% (5/14), 57.1% (8/14), and 78.6% (11/14) of all patients at 1-week, 1-month and 3-month post treatment. Likewise, our analysis showed that the combination therapy resulted in a significant decrease of VAS score (6.71 ± 0.49 before treatment vs 3.36 ± 0.40 at 3 month post treatment) and overall responding rate of 92.0% using VRS pain assessment. Consistently, tumor size was reduced from 42.16 ± 10.32 before treatment to 29.11 ± 8.73 at 3 months post treatment. No serious complications were detected. Our study demonstrate that the combination of arterial chemoembolization and 125I particles resulted in evident pain relief and reduction of tumor burden, suggesting that the combination treatment could be a feasible and promising therapy for bone tumor management.

The safety and efficacy of TACE combined with apatinib on patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma: a retrospective study.

As a novel vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 tyrosine kinase inhibitor (VEGFR2-TKI), apatinib has a certain anti-tumor effect for a variety of solid tumors. The present study evaluates its efficacy and safety in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In this study, 47 patients with advanced HCC were included. TACE monotherapy group included 22 patients that responded to TACE, while the group that received TACE and apatinib included 25 patients that progressed on TACE and were able to receive apatinib off label. Median overall survival (OS) was significantly improved in the apatinib plus TACE group compared with the TACE group. Similarly, apatinib in combination with TACE significantly prolonged median progression-free survival (PFS) compared with TACE monotherapy. Furthermore, there was a significant difference between combination therapy and monotherapy in both Barcelona clinic liver cancer (BCLC) B and BCLC C group. The combination therapy had a dramatic effect on OS and PFS for patients at both BCLC B and BCLC C level. The most common clinically adverse events of apatinib plus TACE group were fatigue, weight loss, hypertension, hand-foot syndrome and anorexia, which were manageable and tolerable. The efficacy analysis showed that there was no significant association of survival benefit with age, gender, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status, hypertension and hand-foot syndrome. Patients with macrovascular invasion and extrahepatic invasion showed worse survival benefits. In conclusion, apatinib combined with TACE revealed certain survival benefits for HCC patients who experienced progression following TACE, which can provide a promising strategy for HCC treatment.

Balloon dilatation for treatment of hepatic venous outflow obstruction following pediatric liver transplantation.

AIM: To assess the efficacy and safety of balloon dilatation for the treatment of hepatic venous outflow obstruction (HVOO) following pediatric liver transplantation. METHODS: A total of 246 pediatric patients underwent liver transplantation at our hospital between June 2013 and September 2016. Among these patients, five were ultimately diagnosed with HVOO. Seven procedures (two patients underwent two balloon dilatation procedures) were included in this analysis. The demographic data, types of donor and liver transplant, interventional examination and therapeutic outcomes of these five children were analyzed. The median interval time between pediatric liver transplantation and balloon dilatation procedures was 9.8 mo (range: 1-32). RESULTS: Five children with HVOO were successfully treated by balloon angioplasty without stent placement, with seven procedures performed for six stenotic lesions. All children underwent successful percutaneous intervention. Among these five patients, four were treated by single balloon angioplasty, and these patients did not develop recurrent stenosis. In seven episodes of balloon angioplasty across the stenosis, the pressure gradient was 12.0 ± 8.8 mmHg before balloon dilatation and 1.1 ± 1.5 mmHg after the procedures, which revealed a statistically significant reduction (P < 0.05). The overall technical success rate among these seven procedures was 100% (7/7), and clinical success was achieved in all five patients (100%). The patients were followed for 4-33 mo (median: 15 mo). No significant procedural complications or procedure-related deaths occurred. CONCLUSION: Balloon dilatation is an effective and safe therapeutic option for HVOO in children undergoing pediatric liver transplantation. Venous angioplasty is also recommended in cases with recurrent HVOO.

Early Response of Hepatocellular Carcinoma to Chemoembolization: Volume Computed Tomography Liver Perfusion Imaging as a Short-Term Response Predictor.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of lesion-oriented whole-liver computed tomography (CT) perfusion for predicting transarterial chemoembolization early treatment response in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS: Volume helical shuttle CT perfusion imaging on the whole liver was prospectively performed on 39 patients with 46 independent HCC lesions before target-selected chemoembolization. The therapeutic effects were assessed: responder group included lesions with a complete and partial response, whereas the nonresponder group contained stable and progressive disease. The perfusion parameter value comparison between 2 groups and receiver operating characteristic analyses were performed. RESULTS: The responders demonstrated higher hepatic arterial perfusion (HAP) and hepatic arterial perfusion index (HAPI) and lower hepatic portal perfusion (HPP) compared with the nonresponders among the 34 lesions without Vp3 or Vp4 portal vein thrombosis. In addition, HAP and HAPI had good prognostic values. CONCLUSIONS: Whole-liver CT perfusion allows for hemodynamic evaluation of HCC lesions. The HAP, HAPI, and hepatic portal perfusion values may be useful predictors of short-term therapeutic response after transarterial chemoembolization.

Therapeutic effect of transarterial chemoembolization combined with apatinib on patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma / 中国肿瘤临床

Objective: To evaluate the therapeutic effect of transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) combined with apatinib on pa-tients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods:Twenty-one patients were treated with TACE combined with 250 mg of apatinib once a day. Disease classification was assessed by investigators using the modified Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tu-mors (mRECIST). The evaluation period was 28 days. Results:The therapeutic effects were classified as follows:3 patients (14.3%) had complete response, 6 patients (28.6%) had partial response, 5 patients (23.8%) had stable disease, and 2 patients (9.5%) had progres-sive disease. The disease control rate was 61.9%, and the objective response rate was 38.1%. In patients, the most frequent adverse events were fatigue (94.4%), anorexia (23.8%), diarrhea (19.0%), hypertension (19.0%), and hand-foot syndrome (19.0%). Conclusion:The short-term therapeutic effect revealed that the combination of TACE and apatinib could be a promising treatment for patients with advanced HCC. Adverse events should be closely monitored and provided with active management.

Therapeutic effect of transarterial chemoembolization combined with apatinib on patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma / 中国肿瘤临床

Objective: To evaluate the therapeutic effect of transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) combined with apatinib on pa-tients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods:Twenty-one patients were treated with TACE combined with 250 mg of apatinib once a day. Disease classification was assessed by investigators using the modified Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tu-mors (mRECIST). The evaluation period was 28 days. Results:The therapeutic effects were classified as follows:3 patients (14.3%) had complete response, 6 patients (28.6%) had partial response, 5 patients (23.8%) had stable disease, and 2 patients (9.5%) had progres-sive disease. The disease control rate was 61.9%, and the objective response rate was 38.1%. In patients, the most frequent adverse events were fatigue (94.4%), anorexia (23.8%), diarrhea (19.0%), hypertension (19.0%), and hand-foot syndrome (19.0%). Conclusion:The short-term therapeutic effect revealed that the combination of TACE and apatinib could be a promising treatment for patients with advanced HCC. Adverse events should be closely monitored and provided with active management.