We herein report a case of traumatic fracture of the stapes accompanying vestibular window rupture with perilymph fistula, and its diagnosis and surgical procedure were discussed. In the present case, a direct force through the external auditory canal damaged not only the ossicular chain but also the vestibular window. On the exploratory tympanotomy, the complete dislocation and fracture of the...

BACKGROUND Vacuum-assisted closure (VAC) is a widely used therapy in patients with poststernotomy mediastinitis. The aim of this study was to evaluate sternal stability during VAC application at seven negative pressures (-50 to -200 mm Hg) in a porcine wound model. METHODS Six pigs underwent median sternotomy and 2 steel wires were fixed at each sternal side and connected to a traction device...

The real-time estimation of muscle forces could be a very valuable tool for rehabilitation. By seeing how much muscle force is being produced during rehabilitation, therapists know whether they are working within safe limits in their therapies and patients know if they are producing enough force to expect improvement. This is especially true for rehabilitation of Achilles tendon ruptures where,...

About 15 years ago, the steered molecular dynamics (SMD) was used to probe binding of ligand to biomolecule surfaces but in terms of drug design this approach has only recently attached attention of researchers. The main idea of using SMD to screen out leads is based on the hypothesis that the larger is the force needed to unbind a ligand from a receptor the higher its binding affinity. Thus, i...

One of the most intriguing results of single-molecule experiments on proteins and nucleic acids is the discovery of functional heterogeneity: the observation that complex cellular machines exhibit multiple, biologically active conformations. The structural differences between these conformations may be subtle, but each distinct state can be remarkably long-lived, with interconversions between s...

Multivalent biomolecular interactions allow for a balanced interplay of mechanical stability and malleability, and nature makes widely use of it. For instance, systems of similar thermal stability may have very different rupture forces. Thus it is of paramount interest to study and understand the mechanical properties of multivalent systems through well-characterized model systems. We analyzed ...

During the last decade, many authors took advantage of new methodologies based on atomic force microscopy (AFM), biomembrane force probes (BFPs), laminar flow chambers or optical traps to study at the single-molecule level the formation and dissociation of bonds between receptors and ligands attached to surfaces. Experiments provided a wealth of data revealing the complexity of bond response to...

The fact that biological tissues are stable over prolonged periods of time while individual receptor-ligand bonds only have limited lifetime underscores the critical importance of cooperative behaviors of multiple molecular bonds, in particular the competition between the rate of rupture of closed bonds (death rate) and the rate of rebinding of open bonds (birth rate) in a bond cluster. We have...