A Study of Occupational Radiation Dosimetry During Fluoroscopically Guided Simulated Urological Surgery in the Lithotomy Position.

OBJECTIVE: To quantify through environmental audit the radiation dose that urologists receive during surgery in the lithotomy position, and to quantify the dose reduction achieved by altering exposure techniques and personal protective equipment use. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Simulated surgery in the lithotomy position using an anthropomorphic phantom as a patient and a SimMan® mannequin as the surgeon. Pulsed fluoroscopy, focus-to-skin distance (FSD), collimation, and addition of a lead shield at the table end were individually and collectively introduced after a control study. Scattered X-ray dose rates to the simulated surgeon's eye, thyroid, trunk, external genitalia, and leg were measured with each of the technique adjustments. The absorbed dose in air at the phantom skin was measured throughout. Results were compared to discover surgeon dose rates with technique alteration. RESULTS: Increasing FSD leads to a rise in surgeon eye dose, and table end lead protection increases the patient skin dose. Use of all the dose-reduction techniques together reduces the dose to the patient, and a surgeon's trunk dose is decreased by 95%, external genitalia dose by 99%, and leg dose by 97%. Sitting to perform fluoroscopically guided surgery in the lithotomy position increases surgeon dose by a median value of 17%, with the external genitalia dose increased by 78% compared with the standing position. CONCLUSIONS: This study describes effective methods of dose reduction that are easy to instigate. The resulting reduction in radiation dose during urology procedures meets the requirements of international guidelines and legislation. This change in practice improves patient care and reduces risk to urologists from occupational exposure to radiation. By combining all of the dose-reduction techniques, urologists should never reach the threshold for deterministic radiation effects to their eyes during their career, and they will have a significantly lower chance of stochastic risks such as cancer.

Close up on remote interviews.

Embrace it or shy away from it, the march of technology moves onwards relentlessly. Job interviews, often seen as the most human part of the recruitment process, are increasingly moving to video conference or services such as Skype or FaceTime, especially for a first interview.

Grow your own success.

Each person's career is an individual journey. The decisions you have made since you were young about what to study, which job to go into and how you perform your role are highly idiosyncratic.

Adaptation and antibiotic tolerance of anaerobic Burkholderia pseudomallei.

The Gram-negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei is the etiological agent of melioidosis and is remarkably resistant to most classes of antibacterials. Even after months of treatment with antibacterials that are relatively effective in vitro, there is a high rate of treatment failure, indicating that this pathogen alters its patterns of antibacterial susceptibility in response to cues encountered in the host. The pathology of melioidosis indicates that B. pseudomallei encounters host microenvironments that limit aerobic respiration, including the lack of oxygen found in abscesses and in the presence of nitric oxide produced by macrophages. We investigated whether B. pseudomallei could survive in a nonreplicating, oxygen-deprived state and determined if this physiological state was tolerant of conventional antibacterials. B. pseudomallei survived initial anaerobiosis, especially under moderately acidic conditions similar to those found in abscesses. Microarray expression profiling indicated a major shift in the physiological state of hypoxic B. pseudomallei, including induction of a variety of typical anaerobic-environment-responsive genes and genes that appear specific to anaerobic B. pseudomallei. Interestingly, anaerobic B. pseudomallei was unaffected by antibacterials typically used in therapy. However, it was exquisitely sensitive to drugs used against anaerobic pathogens. After several weeks of anaerobic culture, a significant loss of viability was observed. However, a stable subpopulation that maintained complete viability for at least 1 year was established. Thus, during the course of human infection, if a minor subpopulation of bacteria inhabited an oxygen-restricted environment, it might be indifferent to traditional therapy but susceptible to antibiotics frequently used to treat anaerobic infections.

Identification of a Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain with stable, low-level resistance to isoniazid.

We have identified a potential quality control strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to monitor isoniazid susceptibility testing. This strain (strain A) has a stable phenotypic low-level resistance to isoniazid, has a mutation of C (-15) --> T in the inhA promoter region, and gave consistent susceptibility test results in 141 laboratories.