BACKGROUND Enucleation of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNETs) via robotic surgery has rarely been described. This study sought to assess the safety and efficiency of robotic surgery for the enucleation of small pNETs. METHODS A comparison was conducted of enucleation of pNETs smaller than 2 cm by robotic or open surgery between January 2000 and May 2015. Propensity score matching was us...

In a retrospective case series study, medical records were evaluated for all male patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnosed over a one-year period with foot fractures (n = 30) confirmed by magnetic resonance imaging at a Los Angeles outpatient private practice rheumatology clinic. Proportionally more patients had received tenofovir prefracture (17 [57%]) than those who...

BACKGROUND Transseptal puncture is a critical step in achieving left atrial (LA) access for a variety of cardiac procedures. Although the mechanical Brockenbrough needle has historically been used for this procedure, a needle employing radiofrequency (RF) energy has more recently been approved for clinical use. We sought to investigate the comparative effectiveness of an RF versus conventional ...

Morphologic dysplasia remains the criterion standard of cancer risk in Barrett esophagus but poses many challenges including distinction from reactive inflammatory change. Gastric foveolar dysplasia, a newly described subtype comprising 15% to 20% of Barrett dysplasia, overlaps with reactive cardiac mucosa in gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Despite the clinical importance of accurate di...

Geometric complexity theory (GCT) is an approach towards the P vs. NP and related problems. The article [GCTflip] describes its defining strategy, called the flip, to resolve the self referential paradox, which is the root difficulty in these problems. This article describes an approach based on positivity hypotheses in algebraic geometry and representation theory to implement the flip and ther...

Let HN denote the problem of determining whether a system of multivariate polynomials with integer coefficients has a complex root. It has long been known that HN∈P =⇒ P=NP and, thanks to recent work of Koiran, it is now known that the truth of theGeneralized Riemann Hypothesis (GRH) yields the implication HN 6∈P =⇒ P 6=NP. We show that the assumption of GRH in the latter implication can be rep...

INTRODUCTION Left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy (LVH) and reduced LV function correlate with poor prognosis in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Our aim is to investigate whether mild-to-moderate CKD is associated with cardiac abnormalities. METHODS Echocardiography, including tissue Doppler imaging, was performed in 103 patients with CKD at stages 2-3 and 4-5, and in 53 healthy cont...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Wake-up ischemic stroke (WUIS) patients are not thrombolysed even if they meet other criteria for treatment. We hypothesized that patients with WUIS showing no or early ischemic changes on brain imaging will have thrombolysis outcomes comparable with those with known time of symptom onset. METHODS Consecutive sampling of a prospective registry of patients with stroke be...

In addition to the main function of promoting polymerization and stabilization of microtubules, other roles are being attributed to tau, now considered a multifunctional protein. In particular, previous studies suggest that tau is involved in chromosome stability and genome protection. We performed cytogenetic analysis, including molecular karyotyping, on lymphocytes and fibroblasts from patien...