Acupuncture-Neuroimaging Research Trends over Past Two Decades: A Bibliometric Analysis / 中国结合医学杂志

OBJECTIVE@#To identify topics attracting growing research attention as well as frontier trends of acupuncture-neuroimaging research over the past two decades.@*METHODS@#This paper reviewed data in the published literature on acupuncture neuroimaging from 2000 to 2020, which was retrieved from the Web of Science database. CiteSpace was used to analyze the publication years, countries, institutions, authors, keywords, co-citation of authors, journals, and references.@*RESULTS@#A total of 981 publications were included in the final review. The number of publications has increased in the recent 20 years accompanied by some fluctuations. Notably, the most productive country was China, while Harvard University ranked first among institutions in this field. The most productive author was Tian J with the highest number of articles (50), whereas the most co-cited author was Hui KKS (325). Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (92) was the most prolific journal, while Neuroimage was the most co-cited journal (538). An article written by Hui KKS (2005) exhibited the highest co-citation number (112). The keywords "acupuncture" (475) and "electroacupuncture" (0.10) had the highest frequency and centrality, respectively. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) ranked first with the highest citation burst (6.76).@*CONCLUSION@#The most active research topics in the field of acupuncture-neuroimaging over the past two decades included research type, acupoint specificity, neuroimaging methods, brain regions, acupuncture modality, acupoint specificity, diseases and symptoms treated, and research type. Whilst research frontier topics were "nerve regeneration", "functional connectivity", "neural regeneration", "brain network", "fMRI" and "manual acupuncture".

Correlation of CT-derived pectoralis muscle status and COVID-19 induced lung injury in elderly patients.

OBJECTIVES: To explore the association between CT-derived pectoralis muscle index (PMI) and COVID-19 induced lung injury. METHODS: We enrolled 116 elderly COVID-19 patients linked to the COVID-19 outbreak in Nanjing Lukou international airport. We extracted three sessions of their CT data, including one upon admission (T1), one during the first 2 weeks when lung injury peaked (T2) and one on day 14 ± 2 (T3). Lung injury was assessed by CT severity score (CTSS) and pulmonary opacity score (POS). Pneumonia evolution was evaluated by changes of CT scores at T2 from T1(Δ). RESULTS: The maximum CT scores in low PMI patients were higher than those of normal PMI patients, including CTSS1 (7, IQR 6-10 vs. 5, IQR 3-6, p < 0.001), CTSS2 (8, IQR 7-11 vs. 5, IQR 4-7, p < 0.001) and POS (2, IQR 1-2.5 vs. 1, IQR 1-2, p < 0.001). Comorbidity (OR = 6.15, p = 0.023) and the presence of low PMI (OR = 5.43, p = 0.001) were predictors of lung injury aggravation with ΔCTSS1 > 4. The presence of low PMI (OR = 5.98, p < 0.001) was the predictor of lung injury aggravation with ΔCTSS2 > 4. Meanwhile, presence of low PMI (OR = 2.82, p = 0.042) and incrementally increasing D-dimer (OR = 0.088, p = 0.024) were predictors of lung injury aggravation with ΔPOS = 2. CONCLUSIONS: PMI can be easily assessed on chest CT images and can potentially be used as one of the markers to predict the severity of lung injury in elderly COVID-19 patients.

Differentiation of hypovascular pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors and mass-forming pancreatitis by enhanced CT / 医学研究生学报

ObjectiveTo explore the value of MSCT for differentiating the hypovascular pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (Hypo-PNETs) from mass-forming pancreatitis.Methods21 patients with histological-confirmed MPFs and 19 patients with Hypo-PNETs who underwent preoperative dynamic contrast-enhanced CT were included. The CT images were analyzed including tumor size,density, border, CT values in each phase, dilatation of pancreatic duct and bile duct and metastases. The clinical data included age, sex and clinical symptoms.ResultsMFPs often occurred in male patient compared with Hypo-PNETs (85.7% vs 52.6%, P<0.05), and the difference is statistically significant; Metastases only occurred in Hypo-PNETs (P<0.05), and the difference is drastically significant. The well-defined margin often occurred in Hypo-PNETs (52.4% vs 47.6%, P=0.032). Solid tumor more happened in MFPs(95.2% vs 47.4%, P＜0.05). The CT values in the portal of MFPs were higher than Hypo-PNETs(P<0.05). The combined features showed accepted diagnostic performance for differentiating Hypo-PNETs from MFPs (89.5% of sensitivity and 95.2% of specificity).ConclusionMFPs often occurred in male patient, and CT values of portal phase, density, border and metastases may be valuable for differentiating Hypo-PNETs from MFPs.