Association between metal implants and urinary chromium levels in US adults: a cross-sectional study from NHANES.

Metal implants play a significant role in orthopedics, commonly used for treating fractures, joint replacement surgeries, spinal procedures, and more. Chromium (Cr), crucial in these implants, may raises health concerns. However, the relationship between metal implants and urine Cr levels remains uncertain. We aimed to evaluate this relationship. We conducted a cross-sectional study on 1419 individuals aged 40 years or older using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) spanning the years 2017 to 2020. Multivariate linear regression models and subgroup analysis were applied to assess associations between metal implants and urine Cr levels. Among the 1419 participants, 402 [28.3%] self-reported having metal objects in their bodies. After adjusting for potential confounding factors, metal implants were positively correlated with the accumulation of urine Cr (ß = 0.41, 95% CI 0.04-0.77, p = 0.028). However, the positive correlation of metal implants with urine Cr was only present in females (ß = 0.81, 95% CI 0.08-1.53, p = 0.029), but not in males. Our study revealed higher urine Cr levels in individuals with metal implants, with noticeable gender differences. Additionally, those with metal implants exhibited a more pronounced elevation in urine Cr levels with increasing age compared to individuals without implants.

Association between secondhand smoke exposure and rheumatoid arthritis in US never-smoking adults: a cross-sectional study from NHANES.

While smoking is widely acknowledged as a risk factor for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the connection between secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure and RA in never-smoking adults remains limited and inconsistent. This study aims to explore and quantify this association using serum cotinine levels. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 14,940 adults who self-report as never smokers, using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data from 1999 to 2018. Based on previous literature, SHS exposure was categorized into four groups according to serum cotinine levels. Compared to individuals in the unexposed group (serum cotinine < 0.05 ng/mL), the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for RA was 1.37 (95% CI 1.14-1.64, p = 0.001) in the low exposure group (serum cotinine at 0.05 to 0.99 ng/mL) after adjusting for covariates. However, no significant association was found in the moderate exposure group (serum cotinine at 1 to 10 ng/mL) or the heavy exposure group (serum cotinine ≥ 10 ng/mL). Furthermore, we detected a non-linear, positively saturated correlation between the cotinine levels after log2 transformation and RA, with a turning point at approximately - 2.756 ng/mL (OR = 1.163, 95% CI 1.073-1.261, p = 0.0002). The stability of the results was confirmed by subgroup analysis.

An Improved FAST Algorithm Based on Image Edges for Complex Environment.

In complex environments such as those with low textures or obvious brightness changes, point features extracted from a traditional FAST algorithm cannot perform well in pose estimation. Simultaneously, the number of point features extracted from FAST is too large, which increases the complexity of the build map. To solve these problems, we propose an L-FAST algorithm based on FAST, in order to reduce the number of extracted points and increase their quality. L-FAST pays more attention to the intersection of line elements in the image, which can be extracted directly from the related edge image. Hence, we improved the Canny edge extraction algorithm, including denoising, gradient calculation and adaptive threshold. These improvements aimed to enhance the sharpness of image edges and effectively extract the edges of strong light or dark areas in the images as brightness changed. Experiments on digital standard images showed that our improved Canny algorithm was smoother and more continuous for the edges extracted from images with brightness changes. Experiments on KITTI datasets showed that L-FAST extracted fewer point features and increased the robustness of SLAM.

Pancreatogastrostomy vs pancreatojejunostomy after pancreaticoduodenectomy: An updated meta-analysis of RCTs and our experience.

BACKGROUND: Pancreatoduodenectomy (PD) is one of the most important operations in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery. AIM: To evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of pancreaticojejunostomy (PJ) and pancreaticogastrostomy (PG). METHODS: This meta-analysis was performed using Review Manager 5.3. All clinical randomized controlled trials, in which patients underwent PD with pancreatico-digestive tract reconstruction via PJ or PG, were included. RESULTS: The search of PubMed, Wanfang Data, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library provided 125 citations. After further analysis, 11 trials were included from nine counties. In all, 909 patients underwent PG and 856 underwent PJ. Meta-analysis showed that pancreatic fistula (PF) was a significantly lower morbidity in the PG group than in the PJ group (odds ratio [OR] = 0.67, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.53-0.86, P = 0.002); however, grades B and C PF was not significantly different between the two groups (OR = 0.61, 95%CI: 0.34-1.09, P = 0.09). Postoperative hemorrhage showed a significantly lower morbidity in the PJ group than in the PG group (OR = 1.47, 95%CI: 1.05-2.06, P = 0.03). Delayed gastric emptying was not significantly different between the two groups (OR = 1.09, 95%CI: 0.83-1.41, P = 0.54). CONCLUSION: There is no difference in the incidence of grades B and C PF between the two groups. However, postoperative bleeding is significantly higher in PG than in PJ. Binding PJ or binding PG is a safe and secure technique according to our decades of experience.