Design Principle and Proofing of a New Smart Textile Material That Acts as a Sensor for Immobility in Severe Bed-Confined Patients.

The immobility of patients confined to continuous bed rest continues to raise a couple of very serious challenges for modern medicine. In particular, the overlooking of sudden onset immobility (as in acute stroke) and the delay in addressing the underlying conditions are of utmost importance for the patient and, in the long term, for the medical and social systems. This paper describes the design principles and concrete implementation of a new smart textile material that can form the substrate of intensive care bedding, that acts as a mobility/immobility sensor in itself. The textile sheet acts as a multi-point pressure-sensitive surface that sends continuous capacitance readings through a connector box to a computer running a dedicated software. The design of the capacitance circuit ensures enough individual points to provide an accurate description of the overlying shape and weight. We describe the textile composition and circuit design as well as the preliminary data collected during testing to demonstrate the validity of the complete solution. These results suggest that the smart textile sheet is a very sensitive pressure sensor and can provide continuous discriminatory information to allow for the very sensitive, real-time detection of immobility.

Current and Emerging Approaches for Spine Tumor Treatment.

Spine tumors represent a significant social and medical problem, affecting the quality of life of thousands of patients and imposing a burden on healthcare systems worldwide. Encompassing a wide range of diseases, spine tumors require prompt multidisciplinary treatment strategies, being mainly approached through chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgical interventions, either alone or in various combinations. However, these conventional tactics exhibit a series of drawbacks (e.g., multidrug resistance, tumor recurrence, systemic adverse effects, invasiveness, formation of large bone defects) which limit their application and efficacy. Therefore, recent research focused on finding better treatment alternatives by utilizing modern technologies to overcome the challenges associated with conventional treatments. In this context, the present paper aims to describe the types of spine tumors and the most common current treatment alternatives, further detailing the recent developments in anticancer nanoformulations, personalized implants, and enhanced surgical techniques.

The Role of OsiriX Based Virtual Endoscopy in Planning Endoscopic Transsphenoidal Surgery for Pituitary Adenoma.

AIM: Virtual endoscopy (VE) is the navigation of a 3D model reconstructed from radiological image data. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the role and accuracy of the virtual endoscopy realized using commercially available software, OsiriX, as a method of planning of surgical interventions. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The computed tomographies of 22 patients with pituitary adenomas proposed for endoscopic approach were reconstructed using OsiriX. VE was performed prior to surgery to assess the surgical corridor and particular anatomy. We evaluated the following landmarks: inferior and middle turbinate, sphenoid ostia (SO), choanal arch (Ch), sphenoethmoidal recess (SER), sphenoid septa, sella turcica, carotid prominences and opticocarotid recesses (OCR). The intraoperative endoscopic images were reviewed and compared with the virtual images. RESULTS: The virtual images had a good resemblance with the actual surgical images. All the structures from the nasal cavity were identified and had a perfect matching except the SO which was identified in 8 cases in VE vs. 12 intraoperative. All the structures from the sphenoid sinus were identified with perfect matching except the ipsilateral carotid prominence (14 in VE vs. 10 intraoperative) and the contralateral carotid prominence (16 in VE vs. 18 intraoperative). The VE could not show the state of the sellar floor and did not offer any information about the sellar content. CONCLUSION: VE realized in OsiriX represents an affordable alternative to the specially designed systems, offering reliable data and good quality images that are useful for the preoperative planning, but some limitations are present such as inability to obtain additional information in cases where the sphenoid sinus is fully occupied by tumor or not aerated, inability to clearly differentiate between structures at the level of the sella, and impossibility to simulate working instruments.