BACKGROUND After a low anterior resection, creating a defunctioning stoma is vital for securing the anastomosis in low-lying rectal cancer patients receiving concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Although it decreases the complication and reoperation rates associated with anastomotic leakage, the complications that arise before and after stoma closure should be carefully evaluated and managed. METHOD...

The American Cancer Society estimated that 39,610 new cases of rectal cancer were diagnosed in the United States in 2015. Surgery is the primary treatment for rectal cancer, with the majority of patients undergoing sphincter-preserving surgery with low anterior resection. Although low anterior resection can prevent patients from having a permanent colostomy, bowel dysfunction may occur in 60% t...

Figure 1. Preoperative photograph of mandibu-lar osteosarcoma. DESCRIPTION A 22-year-old female presented with an acquired mandibular defect status post radical resection of mandibular osteosarcoma. Patient subsequently underwent fibular osteocuta-neous free flap reconstruction.

A reductive analysis of factors limiting growth of plants subjected to Cd treatment is made in this review. The non-specific character of Cd phytotoxicity and its negative effects on the basic growth components: RGR, NAR, LAR, SLA, etc. are presented. An attempt to connect the changes in plant growth with some effects of Cd on water relations, dark respiration, and photosynthesis was made. It w...

PURPOSE Locally advanced rectal cancer may require an intraoperative decision regarding curative multivisceral resection (MVR) of adjacent organs. In bulky tumor cases, ensuring sufficient distal resection margin (DRM) for achievement of oncologic safety is very difficult. This study is designed to evaluate the adequate length of DRM in multiviscerally resected rectal cancer. METHODS A total ...

Therapeutic options to cure advanced, recurrent, and unresectable thymomas are limited. The most important factor for long-term survival of thymoma patients is complete resection (R0) of the tumor. We therefore evaluated the response to and the induction of resectability of primarily or locally recurrent unresectable thymomas and thymic carcinomas by octreotide Long-Acting Release (LAR) plus pr...

The purpose of this study was to compare the kinematics in terms of the locations and loci of instantaneous axes of rotation (IARs) at levels T11-T12 and T12-L1 of thoracolumbar junction (TLJ). The LAR is one of the kinematics characteristics of a functional spinal unit (FSU) in a plane under load. There is little information about loci of IARs in the TLJ. Validated finite element (FE) models o...

Fish eyes and brain are highly susceptible to environmental Hg exposure but this issue is still scarcely investigated, mainly regarding methylmercury (MeHg) accumulation. Yet, Hg levels in fish lens have not been previously examined under field conditions. Total Hg (tHg), MeHg and inorganic Hg (iHg) levels were assessed in the brain, eye wall and lens of the golden grey mullet (Liza aurata) fro...

For least squares regression, Efron et al. (2004) proposed an efficient solution path algorithm, the least angle regression (LAR). They showed that a slight modification of the LAR leads to the whole LASSO solution path. Both the LAR and LASSO solution paths are piecewise linear. Recently Wu (2011) extended the LAR to generalized linear models and the quasi-likelihood method. In this work we ex...