Iagnosis and treatment of myelitis after lumbar reoperation: A case report.

RATIONALE: At present, acute myelitis (AM) is a great challenge to diagnosis and treatment because of its complicated etiology, critical condition, and poor prognosis, and it is easy to leave different degrees of limb motor dysfunction. The report of this case is helpful to improve the understanding of AM after lumbar surgery, reduce misdiagnosis and provide reference for clinical treatment. PATIENTS CONCERN: This study reported a case of AM after lumbar reoperation. Before the patient was diagnosed as AM, we gave high-dose hormone anti-inflammatory and detumescence symptomatic treatment according to empirical treatment, and the effect was ideal and rehabilitation treatment was actively carried out at the right time. After 10 months of follow-up, the patient recovered well. DIAGNOSIS: Because lumbar surgery is a contraindication of lumbar puncture, the patient's diagnosis was confirmed by thoracic magnetic resonance imaging. Magnetic resonance imaging of thoracic vertebra on the 17th day after lumbar operation showed that small round T1W1 signal, slightly higher T2W1 signal and T2-fat suppression imaging equal signal were seen in the horizontal spinal cord of thoracic vertebra 10. INTERVENTION: According to the empirical treatment, patients have been given high-dose hormone therapy after operation, and comprehensive treatment such as comprehensive training of paraplegic limbs, joint loosening training, electric massage and other rehabilitation training will be carried out when the general condition of patients improves. OUTCOMES: After 10 months of follow-up, there were no major sequelae such as limb paralysis. CONCLUSION: Due to the rarity of AM in clinical work, it is easy for doctors to ignore the disease and miss the best treatment stage, which will lead to serious sequelae.

Transient spinal cord dysfunction after surgery for intraspinal tumors: A case report.

RATIONALE: Limb dysfunction is not uncommon clinically after intramural tumor surgery. However, there are no relevant literature reports on the recovery of unilateral motor function caused by spinal cord dysfunction after short-term observation and treatment. The report of such cases is of great value for improving the cognition of postoperative complications of meningioma reducing misdiagnosis and providing reference for clinical treatment. PATIENT CONCERNS: A 73-year-old female patient with numbness and weakness in both lower limbs accompanied by unstable walking for 2 months. Combined with imaging data and postoperative pathological diagnosis, it was diagnosed as thoracic spinal meningioma. The patient experienced transient unilateral limb dysfunction after surgery. DIAGNOSES: Magnetic resonance imaging and its enhanced magnetic resonance imaging suggest a space occupying lesion on the left side of the spinal canal at the level of the thoracic 3 to 4 vertebral body, possibly a meningioma. The postoperative pathology was grade I meningioma. INTERVENTION: Administer 10 mL of dexamethasone, 1 g of methylprednisolone, and 250 mL of mannitol for treatment. OUTCOMES: After 3 hours, the patient's muscle strength gradually recovered, and after 12 hours, it was better than the preoperative level. CONCLUSION: Spinal cord dysfunction may occur after surgery for intraspinal meningioma in the upper thoracic spine. Unlike spinal cord dysfunction caused by spinal cord injury, this dysfunction is short-term and transient. The use of hormones and diuretics is a feasible solution that can quickly restore patient limb function.

How does the correction in lumbar lordosis affect the spinopelvic realignments in degenerative lumbar scoliosis underwent scoliosis surgery?

BACKGROUND: To evaluate the effects of correction in lumbar lordosis (LL) that have on full-body realignments in patients with degenerative lumbar scoliosis (DLS) who had undergone long sacroiliac fusion surgery. METHODS: A multi-center retrospective study including 88 DLS patients underwent the surgical procedure of long sacroiliac fusion with instrumentations was performed. Comparisons of radiographic and quality-of-life (QoL) data among that at the pre-operation, the 3rd month and the final follow-up were performed. The correlations between the LL correction and the changes in other spinopelvic parameters were explored using Pearson-correlation linear analysis and linear regression analysis. The correlation coefficient (r) and the adjusted r2 were calculated subsequently. RESULTS: All radiographic and QoL data improved significantly (P < 0.001) after the surgical treatments. The LL correction correlated (P < 0.001) with the changes in the sacral slope (SS, r = 0.698), pelvic tilt (PT, r = -0.635), sagittal vertical axis (SVA, r = -0.591), T1 pelvic angle (TPA, r = -0.782), and the mismatch of pelvic incidence minus lumbar lordosis (PI-LL, r = -0.936), respectively. Moreover, LL increased by 1° for each of the following spinopelvic parameter changes (P < 0.001): 2.62° for SS (r2 = 0.488), -4.01° for PT (r2 = 0.404), -4.86° for TPA (r2 = 0.612), -2.08° for the PI-LL (r2 = 0.876) and -15.74 mm for SVA (r2 = 0.349). Changes in the thoracic kyphosis (r = 0.259) and pelvic femur angle (r = 0.12) were independent of the LL correction, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: LL correction correlated significantly to the changes in spinopelvic parameters; however, those independent variables including the thoracic spine and hip variables probably be remodeled themselves to maintain the full-body balance in DLS patients underwent the correction surgery.

Linear barycentric rational collocation method for solving generalized Poisson equations.

We consider the Poisson equation by collocation method with linear barycentric rational function. The discrete form of the Poisson equation was changed to matrix form. For the basis of barycentric rational function, we present the convergence rate of the linear barycentric rational collocation method for the Poisson equation. Domain decomposition method of the barycentric rational collocation method (BRCM) is also presented. Several numerical examples are provided to validate the algorithm.

AXL upregulates c­Myc expression through AKT and ERK signaling pathways in breast cancers.

Breast cancer (BC) is common worldwide. c-Myc and AXL are both overexpressed in BC, promoting its progression. The present study aimed to investigate the role of AXL in c-Myc expression in BC. Overexpression of AXL increased c-Myc expression while knockdown of AXL decreased c-Myc expression as determined by western blot analysis. Pharmaceutical inhibition of AXL also suppressed c-Myc expression. AKT and ERK inhibitor LY294002 and U0126 suppressed c-Myc expression, respectively. AXL overexpression which activates AKT and ERK signaling, upregulates c-Myc expression, while kinase-dead AXL which cannot activate AKT and ERK signaling, does not upregulate c-Myc expression, emphasizing the important role of these two signaling pathways in c-Myc upregulation. Finally, expression data of BC tissues from The Cancer Proteome Atlas displayed an association between AXL and c-Myc. Taken together, the present study revealed that AXL upregulates c-Myc expression through AKT and ERK signaling pathways in BC.

EEG Based Dynamic Functional Connectivity Analysis in Mental Workload Tasks With Different Types of Information.

The accurate evaluation of operators' mental workload in human-machine systems plays an important role in ensuring the correct execution of tasks and the safety of operators. However, the performance of cross-task mental workload evaluation based on physiological metrics remains unsatisfactory. To explore the changes in dynamic functional connectivity properties with varying mental workload in different tasks, four mental workload tasks with different types of information were designed and a newly proposed dynamic brain network analysis method based on EEG microstate was applied in this paper. Six microstate topographies labeled as Microstate A-F were obtained to describe the task-state EEG dynamics, which was highly consistent with previous studies. Dynamic brain network analysis revealed that 15 nodes and 68 pairs of connectivity from the Frontal-Parietal region were sensitive to mental workload in all four tasks, indicating that these nodal metrics had potential to effectively evaluate mental workload in the cross-task scenario. The characteristic path length of Microstate D brain network in both Theta and Alpha bands decreased whereas the global efficiency increased significantly when the mental workload became higher, suggesting that the cognitive control network of brain tended to have higher function integration property under high mental workload state. Furthermore, by using a SVM classifier, an averaged classification accuracy of 95.8% for within-task and 80.3% for cross-task mental workload discrimination were achieved. Results implies that it is feasible to evaluate the cross-task mental workload using the dynamic functional connectivity metrics under specific microstate, which provided a new insight for understanding the neural mechanism of mental workload with different types of information.