Falls from furniture and falls while being carried were most common. 85% suffered a head injury, 70% of which had a traumatic brain injury (TBI). There were seven deaths and one quarter of surviving infants were admitted for 2 or more days.
 
  Hospital admission following a fall is a long-standing problem with no improvement among infants in NSW, commonly leading to head injury and traumatic brain injury. Effective prevention interventions are needed.
 Hospital admission following a fall is a long-standing problem with no improvement among infants in NSW, commonly leading to head injury and traumatic brain injury. Effective prevention interventions are needed.
  To develop and evaluate machine-learning methods that reconstruct fractional anisotropy (FA) values and mean diffusivities (MD) from 3-direction diffusion MRI (dMRI) acquisitions.
 
  Two machine-learning models were implemented to map undersampled dMRI signals with high-quality FA and MD maps that were reconstructed from fully sampled DTI scans. The first model was a previously described multilayer perceptron (MLP), which maps signals and FA/MD values from a single voxel. The second was a convolutional neural network U-Net model, which maps dMRI slices to full FA/MD maps. Each method was trained on dMRI brain scans (N = 46), and reconstruction accuracies were compared with conventional linear-least-squares (LLS) reconstructions.
 
  In an independent testing cohort (N = 20), 3-direction U-Net reconstructions had significantly lower absolute FA error than both 3-direction MLP (U-Net
  0.06 ± 0.01 vs. MLP
  0.08 ± 0.01, P < 1 × 10
  ) and 6-direction LLS (LLS
  0.09 ± 0.03, P = 1 × 10
  ). The MD errors were not significantly different among 3-direction MLP (0.06 ± 0.01 × 10
  mm
  /s), 3-direction U-Net (0.06 ± 0.01 × 10
  mm
  /s), and 6-direction LLS (0.07 ± 0.02 × 10
  mm
  /s, P > .1).
 
  The proposed U-Net model reconstructed FA from 3-direction dMRI scans with improved accuracy compared with both a previously described MLP approach and LLS fitting from 6-direction scans. The MD reconstruction accuracies did not differ significantly between reconstructions.
 The proposed U-Net model reconstructed FA from 3-direction dMRI scans with improved accuracy compared with both a previously described MLP approach and LLS fitting from 6-direction scans. The MD reconstruction accuracies did not differ significantly between reconstructions.Over 70 million individuals are infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) worldwide. Yet most prevalence data are in the adult population, with little focus on paediatrics, partially due to the scarcity of public data. The objective of this paper is to examine HCV prevalence in children by estimating prevalence rates among women, given the assumption that most cases are vertically transmitted. Between 2001 and 2017, maternal HCV infection affected ~ 0.24% of all births, with prevalence increasing by at least 261%. On average, approximately 0.01% of the total number of live births were infected with HCV, with a 245% increase in the number of children born with the infection. HCV epidemiology has evolved, with women of childbearing age representing a greater proportion of infected individuals in the United States, and infants born to infected mothers being at risk. We therefore recommend a greater public health focus of HCV on the paediatric population.The ongoing hepatitis A outbreaks in multiple states in the United States have concerned public health authorities since March 2017. The outbreaks have spread throughout 30 states and include primarily persons who use drugs, including persons who inject drugs (PWID) and persons experiencing homelessness. Contaminated drug injection paraphernalia and sharing of these items could potentially aid in transmission of hepatitis A virus (HAV) among these populations. We examined HAV survival on drug paraphernalia frequently shared among PWIDs. The effect of low pH on HAV survival using citric acid, which is frequently used by PWIDs during dose preparation, was investigated. We compared the plaque assay results with those concurrently obtained by qRT-PCR to establish whether HAV RNA levels could be used as surrogates for plaque assay results. HAV suspended in minimal essential media at room temperature infected FRhK4 cells for more than 17 weeks. HAV remained viable in syringes/needles for up to 10 weeks depending on the gauge of the needles and the syringe dead volumes, and on cookers, tourniquets and cotton balls/filter surfaces for up to 4 weeks. HAV retained its infectivity for more than 10 weeks at pH as low as 2. In conclusion, our findings show that HAV survives and remains infective in or on injection drug use equipment for 1 to 10 weeks depending on the type of paraphernalia examined and environmental conditions. These findings suggest that contaminated drug paraphernalia can potentially facilitate the transmission of HAV within populations who share these items.
  Pelvic exenteration is the only surgical option for locally advanced pelvic malignancies infiltrating the surrounding organs. The resultant pelvic void after the procedure is responsible for a number of complications, collectively termed empty pelvis syndrome (EPS). We aim to show how EPS can be minimized by presenting a case series demonstrating the surgical technique of laparoscopic total pelvic exenteration with bilateral pelvic node dissection along with a novel use of the Bakri balloon.
 
  This is a case series of three successive patients undergoing laparoscopic total pelvic exenteration for locally advanced primary, nonmetastatic rectal adenocarcinoma over a period of 1month in a specialized colorectal unit at a tertiary cancer centre. The Bakri balloon was deployed in all three patients and retained for variable time intervals postoperatively. Features of EPS were prospectively documented.
 
  In the first patient, the Bakri balloon was completely deflated and removed on postoperative day (POD) 5. The patient developed subacute intestinal obstruction which resolved with conservative management by POD 12. In the second and third patients, the Bakri balloon was deflated in a sequential manner, beginning on POD 8, until it was finally removed on POD 11.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/ly333531.html  Neither of these patients had any abdominal complaints. A postoperative CT scan of both these patients showed the small bowel loops clearly above the pelvic inlet.
 
  The Bakri balloon is a simple, safe and cost-effective method to reduce the complications of EPS following laparoscopic total pelvic exenteration. A prospective study is ongoing to objectively quantify the benefits of this technique.
 The Bakri balloon is a simple, safe and cost-effective method to reduce the complications of EPS following laparoscopic total pelvic exenteration. A prospective study is ongoing to objectively quantify the benefits of this technique.