Injured patients who have alcohol in their blood have a reduced risk for developing cardiac and renal complications, according to a study from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Among patients who did develop complications, those with alcohol in their blood were less likely to die.
‘After an injury, if you are intoxicated there seems to be a substantial protective effect,’ says UIC injury epidemiologist Lee Friedman, author of the study. ‘But we don

A study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) finds that electromyography (EMG) testing to determine the quality of donor nerves can improve the outcome of nerve transfer surgery to restore function in patients with a brachial plexus injury. EMG is a sophisticated test used to objectively measure muscle and nerve function.
‘Our study found that pre-operative EMG evaluation should be considered a critical component of the donor nerve selection process when planning brachial plexus nerve transfer reconstruction,’ said Scott W. Wolfe, MD, senior investigator and Director of the Center for Brachial Plexus and Traumatic Nerve Injury at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
The brachial plexus is a network of nerves that extends from the spinal cord in the neck, under the collarbone and down the arm. These nerves control the hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder. Injury to the brachial plexus can be devastating, and the most common cause is a serious accident or sports injury. Nerve reconstruction is considered when the nerves are so severely damaged they cannot recover on their own. These complex operations can take up to 12 hours.
One way surgeons can reconstruct nerves is by performing a nerve transfer to restore function. They carefully dissect out portions, or fascicles, of nearby functioning nerves (called ‘donor nerves’) and transfer these fascicles to the injured nerves to restore electrical connectivity and enable nerve regeneration to the paralysed muscle. ‘A nerve transfer takes a working nerve from one muscle and transfers part of that nerve to the injured, non-working nerve or another muscle, so the two muscles can share the nerve and regain function,’ Dr. Wolfe explained.
Electromyography is often used in the pre-operative assessment of brachial plexus injuries to estimate the degree of damage. However, the ability to predict surgical outcomes using pre-operative EMG to test donor nerves had not been previously evaluated. Researchers hypothesised that the health of the donor nerve and corresponding muscle, as assessed by EMG, could predict the outcome of nerve transfer surgery.
A retrospective review was conducted to investigate outcomes of nerve transfers for elbow flexion (ability to bend one’s elbow) and shoulder abduction (ability to lift arm away from the body). Muscle strength was graded both pre-operatively and at least one-year after surgery. Pre-operative EMG results for donor nerves were classified on a scale that rated their level of function and then compared with the patient’s muscle strength and range of motion after surgery.
Forty nerve transfers were identified. Twenty-seven were performed for elbow flexion and 13 for shoulder abduction. Overall, the 29 transfers using a normal donor nerve showed significantly greater post-operative improvement in muscle strength and function than the 11 transfers with the less robust donor nerve, as classified by EMG.
In the shoulder patients, the use of normal donor nerves resulted in greater strength and active motion compared to less robust donor nerves. In the elbow cohort, double nerve transfers with two normal donor nerves demonstrated improved strength compared to double nerve transfers when one of the donor nerves was affected by the injury.
Joseph Feinberg, MD, physiatrist-in-chief and co-medical director of the Brachial Plexus Center at HSS, has developed a system to classify potential donor nerves according to four levels of functioning: normal, moderately limited function, very limited function and no function.
‘Interestingly, we found that some of the donor nerves that were damaged and had some functional limitations were still healthy enough to do their job after the nerve transfer operation,’ Dr. Feinberg said. ‘On the flip side, if electromyography shows that a potential donor nerve is not at all functional, the surgeon may want to consider a different nerve donor, or potentially another solution such as nerve grafting or muscle transfer.’
‘Our findings demonstrate that a semi-quantitative EMG classification describing the quality of donor nerves can predict outcome as measured by post-operative muscle strength and range of motion,’ said Dr. Wolfe. ‘Despite the small numbers studied, we observed significantly greater gains in strength and range of motion in the normal donor nerve group as compared to the less robust donor nerves. EMG evaluation has value as a confirmatory component of the donor nerve selection process when planning brachial plexus surgery.’ EurekAlert

The new interferon-free, all-oral, three direct-acting-antiviral (3D) treatment regimen in development by AbbVie has achieved very high rates of virological response in patients chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1 (GT1); according to the results of three studies presented at the International Liver CongressTM 2014.
The 3D regimen consists of the HCV NS3/4A protease inhibitor ABT-450 dosed with ritonavir, the NS5A inhibitor ABT-267, and the NS5B RNA polymerase inhibitor ABT-333.
‘Using this investigational 3D regimen, with or without ribavirin, these studies have demonstrated consistently high cure rates across a number of patient types, including the more difficult-to-treat subtype GT1a, and HCV patients with compensated cirrhosis,’ said EASL’s Scientific Committee Member Dr. Alessio Aghemo, Gastroenterology and Hepatology Unit, Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, University of Milan. ‘The impressive SVR12 results seen are consistent with the results from AbbVie’s phase II studies,’ he added.
In the SAPPHIRE-I study, treatment na

The ZNA hospital network of Antwerp, Belgium, is extending its existing Agfa HealthCare ICIS imaging platform beyond radiology.. With the deployment, all other image-producing departments of the hospital group will be integrated, whether they produce DICOM or non-DICOM images. In addition, patient images from other facilities can be quickly and easily imported as well. The ICIS VIEW zero footprint image viewer will be implemented for internal and external image distribution, for all types of medical images.
With nine sites in the Antwerp area, ZNA is not only among Belgium

When acupuncture first became popular in the Western Hemisphere it had its doubters. It still does. But over time, through detailed observation, scientists have produced real evidence that ancient Chinese practitioners of the medical arts were onto something.

Now new research documents a direct connection between the use of acupuncture and physical processes that could alleviate sepsis, a condition that often develops in hospital intensive care units, springs from infection and inflammation, and takes an estimated 250,000 lives in the United States every year.
‘Sepsis is the major cause of death in the hospital,’ says Luis Ulloa, an immunologist at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School who led the study. ‘But in many cases patients don