Background
Since 2004 in the Department of Oncological Integrated Surgery at the National Institute for Cancer Research of Genoa, we have applied different techniques of reduction mammaplasty for a ...subgroup of 26 patients with medium- to large-sized and ptotic breasts who are candidates for conservative surgery.
Methods
In this series of patients, the choice between different techniques of breast reduction (superior or inferior pedicled or with free areola–nipple graft) depended only on cancer position. The chosen technique minimized reshaping and displacement of residual glandular flaps. In September 2009, the radiotherapists at the Institute began to apply intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) to early breast cancer, and at the time of this report, more than 200 patients have been treated.
Results
This report describes two cases of reduction mammaplasty associated with this new and easily performed radiotherapy option (IORT) and discusses its advantages and cautions.
Conclusions
Close collaboration between surgical oncologist, plastic surgeon, and radiotherapist is essential before and during surgery to obtain adequate tumor resection and good aesthetic results and to minimize postoperative complications.
The diagnosis of pain nature is a troublesome task and a wrong attribution often leads to an increase of costs and to avoidable pharmaceutical adverse reactions. An objective and specific approach to ...achieve this diagnosis is highly desirable. The aim of this work was to investigate urine samples collected from patients suffering from pain of different nature by a metabolomics approach based on 1H NMR spectroscopy and multivariate statistical analysis. We performed a prospective study on 74 subjects: 37 suffering from pain (12 with nociceptive and 25 with neuropathic pain), and 37 controls not suffering from any kind of chronic pain. The application of discriminant analysis on the urine spectral profiles allowed us to classify these two types of pain with high sensibility and specificity. Although the classification relies on the global urine metabolic profile, the individual contribution in discriminating neuropathic pain patients of metabolites such as choline and phosphocholine, taurine and alanine, suggests potential lesions to the nervous system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a urine metabolomics profile is used to classify these two kinds of pain. This methodology, although based on a limited sample, may constitute the basis for a new helpful tool in the clinical diagnosis.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The design of irregular planar phased arrays (PAs) characterized by a highly-modular architecture is addressed. By exploiting the property of self-replicating tile shapes, also known as rep-tiles, ...the arising array layouts consist of tiles having different sizes, but equal shape, all being generated by assembling a finite number of smaller and congruent copies of a single elementary building-block. Towards this end, a deterministic optimization strategy is used so that the arising rep-tile arrangement of the planar PA is an optimal trade-off between complexity, costs, and fitting of user-defined requirements on the radiated power pattern, while guaranteeing the complete overlay of the array aperture. As a representative instance, such a synthesis method is applied to tile rectangular apertures with L-shaped tromino tiles. A set of representative results, concerned with ideal and real antenna models, as well, is reported for validation purposes, but also to point out the possibility/effectiveness of the proposed approach, unlike state-of-the-art tiling techniques, to reliably handle large-size array apertures.
A method for the analysis of the power pattern of phased array antennas (PAs) based on the quantum Fourier transform (QFT) is proposed. The computation of the power pattern given the set of complex ...excitations of the PA elements is addressed within the quantum computing (QC) framework by means of a customized procedure that exploits the quantum mechanics principles and theory. A representative set of numerical results, yielded with a quantum computer emulator, is reported and discussed to assess the reliability of the proposed method by pointing out its features in comparison with the classical approach based on the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), as well.
Within the Smart Electromagnetic Environment (SEME) paradigm, the optimal planning of low-cost and passive building skins (PBSs) is addressed. A set of passive reflective skins are installed on the ...building facades to improve the received power within selected regions-of-interest (RoIs). Towards this aim, an innovative instance of the System-by-Design (SbD) paradigm is proposed to find the optimal PBSs deployment in a real urban environment. An illustrative example is reported to show the effectiveness and the potentialities of the proposed PBSs planning technique.
The analysis of the power pattern of linear phased arrays (PAs) is addressed by exploiting advantages offered by the Quantum Computing (QC) framework. The proposed approach is described in its ...mathematical formulation and the parallel between the classical Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) and the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) algorithm is discussed in the context of the power pattern analysis. The proposed QFT-based method is validated by means of proof-of-concept results, in order to show the peculiarity of the quantum method in terms of accuracy and computational cost.
This work addresses the issue of controlling a Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) in real-time to maximize the network capacity. A RIS control strategy is proposed exploiting a Genetic ...Algorithm (GA) augmented with learning capabilities to achieve high computation efficiency and guarantee consistent network performance in highly-dynamic scenarios. The proposed strategy does not require knowledge of the channel between the RIS and the users, enabling the design of RIS without channel-sensing hardware. The proposed strategy is demonstrated in a small-scale numerical example.
This paper introduces "SHARON", an innovative decision support system (DSS) that exploits wireless communication and localization technologies for the analysis and the planning of Search-And-Rescue ...(SAR) missions in mountain or rural environments.
PDF
