ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the clinical value of indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescence navigation combined with carbon nanoparticles (CNP) in sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) for patients with early breast cancer. Methods A total of 294 early breast cancer patients with axillary node negative in Department of Breast Surgery, Foshan Hospital Affiliated to Sun Yat-Sen University from June 2013 to April 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. Of the patients, 149 cases underwent SLNB with ICG combined with CNP (combination group), while 145 cases underwent SLNB with methylene blue alone (MB group). If the intraoperative pathology results of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) were negative, axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) was avoided. The SLNs detection rate, detection number, metastatic SLNs detection rate in SLNB were compared between two groups. The influence of age and body mass index (BMI) on SLNs detection rate was also analyzed. Results In the combination group, subcutaneous lymphatic channels were successfully visualized in 145 patients, and the detection rate was 97.3％(145/149). The fluorescence of SLNs was successfully detected in 143 patients, and the detection rate was 95.9％(143/149). The detection rate of SLNs was higher in the combination group than that of methylene dye alone group (97.9％vs. 91.0％,χ2=6.902,P<0.05). The average number of detected SLNs was higher in the combination group than that of methylene dye alone group (4.5±1.6 vs. 3.2±1.5,t=4.476,P<0.05). Fifty-eight metastatic SLNs were found in 715 SLNs in the combination group (8.1％), and 26 in 544 SLNs in MB group (4.7％). The detection rate was significantly higher in the combination group than that of methylene dye alone group (χ2=13.714,P<0.01). Age and BMI showed no influence on the detection rate and accuracy of SLNB in two groups (P>0.05). Conclusion The combined tracing of ICG fluorescence and carbon nanoparticles for SLNB has showed a better stability and operability in patients with early breast cancer, which is recommended to be a new SLNB method.
ABSTRACT
The efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatments for Western medicine (WM) diseases relies heavily on the proper classification of patients into TCM syndrome types. The authors developed a data-driven method for solving the classification problem, where syndrome types were identified and quantified based on statistical patterns detected in unlabeled symptom survey data. The new method is a generalization of latent class analysis (LCA), which has been widely applied in WM research to solve a similar problem, i.e., to identify subtypes of a patient population in the absence of a gold standard. A well-known weakness of LCA is that it makes an unrealistically strong independence assumption. The authors relaxed the assumption by first detecting symptom co-occurrence patterns from survey data and used those statistical patterns instead of the symptoms as features for LCA. This new method consists of six steps: data collection, symptom co-occurrence pattern discovery, statistical pattern interpretation, syndrome identification, syndrome type identification and syndrome type classification. A software package called Lantern has been developed to support the application of the method. The method was illustrated using a data set on vascular mild cognitive impairment.
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Humans , Data Collection , Data Interpretation, Statistical , Diagnosis, Differential , Medicine, Chinese TraditionalABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To examine the effect of short-term occupational lead exposure on the inflammatory response system in blood among workers.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A total of 255 lead-exposed workers (length of service ≤1 year) at an electronics factory in Dongguan, China (exposure group), as well as 205 managers without any occupational exposure at another factory (control group), were included in the study. Occupational physical examination was done to get peripheral blood counts. The blood lead levels of workers were determined by atomic absorption spectrometry. The relationship between blood lead and peripheral hemogram was analyzed using SPSS software.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The exposure group had blood lead levels of 0.07∼1.70 µmol/L, falling within the normal range. The leukocyte count, percentage of granulocytes, and absolute value of granulocytes were significantly higher in the exposure group than in the control group, and the results remained unchanged after adjustment for age and sex (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in red blood cell count and hemoglobin value between the two groups (P > 0.05).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Short-term occupational lead exposure may increase the counts of inflammatory cells in blood, but it has little effect on red blood cells and hemoglobin.</p>