Percutaneous epiphysiodesis for arresting growth is a useful method for equalising moderate lower limb-length discrepancy. This paper reviews the result of this procedure performed at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgowfrom 1989 to 1993. There were 8 children (5 girls and 3 boys) ranging in age (chronological) from 10 years 3 months to 13 years 3 months. Limb-length discrepancies (LLD) at the time of surgery were between 2.5 cm to 5.5 cm. The predicted LLD at maturity was obtained using the Moseleys graph. This ranged from 3.9 cm to 8.3 cm. The cause of discrepancy were hemihypertrophy (5), neurofibromatosis (1), AV malformation (1) and neonatal osteomyelitis (1). Bone age in 3 patients corresponded to their chronological age. In 2 patients their bone age were less than their chronological age by 1 year. In the remaining 3 patients their bone were less than their chronological age by 1 to 3 years. All patients had percutaneous epiphysiodesis of both the distal femur and proximal tibia. All patients except one had afinal LLD of 1 cm or less. There were 2 unsatisfactory results: one girl had a valgus knee due to asymmetric physeal closure. Another boy had a final LLD of 3.3 cm as the procedure was done near skeletal maturity. This technique is useful even with LLD greater than 5 cm in children whose predicted height is above average. The difference between chronological age and bone age ranged from I to 3 years.
We report a case of a broken K-wire migrating to the cervical spine from the right clavicle in a 9-year-old child. The initial diagnosis, fracture of the clavicle with an acromioclavicular joint dislocation, was treated by open reduction and K-wiring. One K-wire broke and migrated to the neck, posterolateral to the C6 vertebra. The K-wire was removed percutaneously under image intensification. Acromioclavicular joint dislocation in children is rare since the distal clavicle does not ossify until the age of 18 or 19 years meaning that almost all closed fractures of the clavicle in children can be treated nonoperatively.
Predatory journals and conferences have little or no peer review. Their raison d'être is for making money through the article processing charges and the conference registration fees. Without a critical evaluation, predatory journals publishing flawed results and conclusions would cloud the existing scientific literature. Predatory conferences are the offshoots of predatory publishing. The conferences are not organised by learned societies, but by profit-making event organisers. There is a need for awareness among researchers and clinicians regarding predatory publishing. The scourge of predatory publishing and conferencing should be more often highlighted during scientific meetings and publication courses.
Osteopoikilosis is a rare, inheritable, sclerosing bone dysplasia; sometimes mistaken for osteoblastic bone metastases. We report a case in a 25 year-old lady.
We report a case of a lady presenting with a lesion in the distal radius with classical radiological features of a giant-cell tumour. These tumours are often resected without preliminary histological confirmation. A biopsy done in this patient showed it to be tuberculosis.
Red tide of dinoflagellate was observed in brackish water fish ponds of Terengganu along the coast of the South China Sea during the study period between January 1992 to December 1992. The nearby coastal moat water facing the South China Sea is the source of water for fish pond culture activities of sea bass during the study period. An examination of water quality in fish ponds during the study period indicated that both the organic nutrients were high during the pre-wet monsoon period. The source of the nutrients in coastal water was believed to be derived from the agro-based industrial effluents, fertilizers from paddy fields and untreated animal wastes. This coincided with the peak production of dinoflagellate in the water column in October 1992. The cell count ranges from 8.3 to 60.4×10.4×10(4)/l during the bloom peak period and the bloom species were compared entirely of non-toxic dinoflagellates with Protoperidinium quinquecorne occurring >90% of the total cell count. However, both cultured and indigenous fish species were seen to suffer from oxygen asphyxiation (suffocation due to lack of oxygen). The bloom lasted for a short period (4-5 days) with a massive cell collapse from subsurface to bottom water on the sixth day. The productivity values ranged from 5-25 C g/ l / h with a subsurface maximum value in October 1992. Two species of Ciliophora, Tintinnopsis and Favella, were observed to graze on these dinoflagellates at the end of the bloom period.
We report a case of a 13-year-old girl with an osteosarcoma of the right humerus, which had been diagnosed as an aneurysmal bone cyst at our institution. She underwent curettage and bone grafting of the lesion, which resulted in implantation metastasis of the tumour to the ilium. She died 15 months after presentation owing to pulmonary metastases. This report highlights the possibility of metastasis occurring by direct implantation to a graft donor site. We strongly recommend that a biopsy be performed in cases of presumed benign lesions before proceeding with the definitive surgery.
Between May 1992 through October 1998, twenty-two patients who had adolescent idiopathic scoliosis were treated using Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) spinal instrumentation and fusion. The minimum length of follow-up was 2 years with an average of 2.9 years. Nineteen patients were female and three patients were male. The mean age at the time of the operation was 16.2 years (range, 13 to 24 years). The average blood loss was 1,878 ml and the average operating time was 291 minutes. The mean pre-operative curve was 61.2 degrees, with a range of 40 degrees to 90 degrees. The average post-operative correction of the Cobb's angle was 53.5 per cent, with a range of 33 per cent to 81 per cent. Post-operative immobilization consisted of a maximum of six months in a body cast. There were no neurological injuries, no deep wound infections, and no evidence of pseudoarthroses. Only three complications occurred and these did not disturb the progress of the fusion. This technique safely achieves the objectives of scoliosis correction, and is cost-effective in the treatment of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.
We report a case of a sixteen-month old boy with osteosarcoma of the left humerus. To the best of our knowledge this is the youngest case reported in Malaysia. This case illustrates that osteosarcoma although rare does occur in a very young child. The child died six weeks after presentation due to disseminated disease.
One hundred and seventy five patients treated for burns during 1983 and 1984 were reviewed. The majority of these patients were below eight years of age. These injuries were mainly sustained at home (83.4%) and were usually caused by hot liquids (41.7%). The infection rate was 57.1% and many developed septicaemia (21.7%). Mortality in patients sustaining burns involving greater than 30% of the body surface area was high at 52%.
Nonunion following diaphyseal forearm fracture is an uncommon complication in children. Compression plate fixation with bone grafting has been the standard method to treat this complication. We report a case of hypertrophic nonunion of the ulna in a child who was treated surgically using an elastic stable intramedullary nail (ESIN) without bone grafting. The nonunion healed 4 months after surgery.
Hyperparameter tuning is an important process to maximize the performance of any neural network model. This present study proposed the factorial design of experiment for screening and response surface methodology to optimize the hyperparameter of two artificial neural network algorithms. Feed-forward neural network (FFNN) and radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) are applied to predict the permeate flux of palm oil mill effluent. Permeate pump and transmembrane pressure of the submerge membrane bioreactor system are the input variables. Six hyperparameters of the FFNN model including four numerical factors (neuron numbers, learning rate, momentum, and epoch numbers) and two categorical factors (training and activation function) are used in hyperparameter optimization. RBFNN includes two numerical factors such as a number of neurons and spreads. The conventional method (one-variable-at-a-time) is compared in terms of optimization processing time and the accuracy of the model. The result indicates that the optimal hyperparameters obtained by the proposed approach produce good accuracy with a smaller generalization error. The simulation results show an improvement of more than 65% of training performance, with less repetition and processing time. This proposed methodology can be utilized for any type of neural network application to find the optimum levels of different parameters.
This paper aims at investigating the influence of ultrasound power amplitude on liquid behaviour in a low-frequency (24 kHz) sono-reactor. Three types of analysis were employed: (i) mechanical analysis of micro-bubbles formation and their activities/characteristics using mathematical modelling. (ii) Numerical analysis of acoustic streaming, fluid flow pattern, volume fraction of micro-bubbles and turbulence using 3D CFD simulation. (iii) Practical analysis of fluid flow pattern and acoustic streaming under ultrasound irradiation using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). In mathematical modelling, a lone micro bubble generated under power ultrasound irradiation was mechanistically analysed. Its characteristics were illustrated as a function of bubble radius, internal temperature and pressure (hot spot conditions) and oscillation (pulsation) velocity. The results showed that ultrasound power significantly affected the conditions of hotspots and bubbles oscillation velocity. From the CFD results, it was observed that the total volume of the micro-bubbles increased by about 4.95% with each 100 W-increase in power amplitude. Furthermore, velocity of acoustic streaming increased from 29 to 119 cm/s as power increased, which was in good agreement with the PIV analysis.
Tibia vara and slipped upper femoral epiphysis (SUFE) share a common risk factor, but their relationship is unclear. In both conditions, the patients are usually obese. To the best of our knowledge, there have been only two previous reports in the literature that have described the occurrence of tibia vara and SUFE in three patients. We report a child who was treated for bilateral tibia vara at the age of 3 years and subsequently developed a SUFE at the age of 13 years.
New solid polymer electrolytes (SPE) based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) doped with lithium trifluoromethanesulfonate (LiCF3SO3), dibutyl phthalate (DBP) plasticizer, and zirconium oxide (ZrO2) nanoparticles were prepared by solution-casting technique. The conductivity was enhanced by addition of dibutyl phthalate (DBP) plasticizer and ZrO2 nanofiller with maximum conductivity (1.38 × 10(-4) Scm(-1)). The absorption edge and band gap values showed decreases upon addition of LiSO3CF3, DBP, and ZrO2 due to the formation of localized states in the SPE and the degree of disorder in the films increased.
The influence of sonoluminescence transesterification on biodiesel physicochemical properties was investigated and the results were compared to those of traditional mechanical stirring. This study was conducted to identify the mechanistic features of ultrasonication by coupling statistical analysis of the experiments into the simulation of cavitation bubble. Different combinations of operational variables were employed for alkali-catalysis transesterification of palm oil. The experimental results showed that transesterification with ultrasound irradiation could change the biodiesel density by about 0.3kg/m(3); the viscosity by 0.12mm(2)/s; the pour point by about 1-2°C and the flash point by 5°C compared to the traditional method. Furthermore, 93.84% of yield with alcohol to oil molar ratio of 6:1 could be achieved through ultrasound assisted transesterification within only 20min. However, only 89.09% of reaction yield was obtained by traditional macro mixing/heating under the same condition. Based on the simulated oscillation velocity value, the cavitation phenomenon significantly contributed to generation of fine micro emulsion and was able to overcome mass transfer restriction. It was found that the sonoluminescence bubbles reached the temperature of 758-713K, pressure of 235.5-159.55bar, oscillation velocity of 3.5-6.5cm/s, and equilibrium radius of 17.9-13.7 times greater than its initial size under the ambient temperature of 50-64°C at the moment of collapse. This showed that the sonoluminescence bubbles were in the condition in which the decomposition phenomena were activated and the reaction rate was accelerated together with a change in the biodiesel properties.