Amputees sometimes experience shooting pains or burning sensations in limbs that are no longer there. These sensations seem to originate in the spinal cord and brain, perhaps because neural pathways are receiving mixed signals that something is not right.

A clinical trial by Emory Saint Joseph

Acromio-clavicular joint dislocation is one of the most common shoulder injuries orthopedic surgeons treat. Severe dislocations are often treated with surgery, but patients who opt for non-surgical treatment typically experience fewer complications and return to work sooner, according to new research.
The AC joint is located at the top of the shoulder between the collarbone and top of the shoulder blade. The AC joint is most commonly injured during sports, but can also be caused by motor vehicle accidents or falls.
For minor AC joint dislocations, surgeons often suggest patients wear a sling for a few weeks and undergo physiotherapy, rather than undergo surgery using a plate and screws.

Epilepsy affects more than 65 million people worldwide. One-third of these patients have seizures that are not controlled by medications. In addition, one-third have brain lesions, the hallmark of the disease, which cannot be located by conventional imaging methods. Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have piloted a new method using advanced non-invasive neuroimaging to recognize the neurotransmitter glutamate, thought to be the culprit in the most common form of medication-resistant epilepsy.
Glutamate is an amino acid which transmits signals from neuron to neuron, telling them when to fire. Glutamate normally docks with the neuron, gives it the signal to fire and is swiftly cleared. In patients with epilepsy, stroke and possibly ALS, the glutamate is not cleared, leaving the neuron overwhelmed with messages and in a toxic state of prolonged excitation.
In localization-related epilepsy, the most common form of medication-resistant epilepsy, seizures are generated in a focused section of the brain; in 65 percent of patients, this occurs in the temporal lobe. Removal of the seizure-generating region of the temporal lobe, guided by preoperative MRI, can offer a cure. However, a third of these patients have no identified abnormality on conventional imaging studies and, therefore, more limited surgical options.
‘Identification of the brain region generating seizures in location-related epilepsy is associated with significantly increased chance of seizure freedom after surgery,’ said the new study’s lead author, Kathryn Davis, MD, MSTR, an assistant professor of Neurology at Penn. ‘The aim of the study was to investigate whether a novel imaging method, developed at Penn, could use glutamate to localize and identify the epileptic lesions and map epileptic networks in these most challenging patients.’
‘We theorized that if we could develop a technique which allows us to track the path of and make non-invasive measurements of glutamate in the brain, we would be able to better identify the brain lesions and epileptic foci that current methods miss,’ said senior author Ravinder Reddy, PhD, a professor of Radiology and director of Penn’s Center for Magnetic Resonance and Optical Imaging.
Reddy’s lab developed the glutamate chemical exchange saturation transfer (GluCEST) imaging method, a very high resolution magnetic resonance imaging contrast method not available before now, to measure how much glutamate was in different regions of the brain including the hippocampi, two structures within the left and right temporal lobes responsible for short- and long-term memory and spatial navigation and the most frequent seizure onset region in adult epilepsy patients.
The study tested four patients with medication-resistant epilepsy and 11 controls. In all four patients, concentrations of glutamate were found to be higher in one of the hippocampi, and confirmatory methods (electroencephalography and magnetic resonance spectra) verified independently that the hippocampus with the elevated glutamate was located in the same hemisphere as the epileptic focus/lesion. Consistent lateralization to one side was not seen in the control group.

Penn Medicinehttp://tinyurl.com/jrbr5se

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a revolutionary system for monitoring vital signs that could lead to improved detection and prevention of some cardiovascular issues, as well as greater independence for older adults.

Using patent-pending technology called Coded Hemodynamic Imaging, the device is the first portable system that monitors a patient’s blood flow at multiple arterial points simultaneously and without direct contact with the skin. It is ideal for assessing patients with painful burns, highly contagious diseases, or infants in neonatal intensive care whose tiny fingers make traditional monitoring difficult.

‘Traditional systems in wide use now take one blood pulse reading at one spot on the body. This device acts like many virtual sensors that measure blood flow behaviour on various parts of the body. The device relays measurements from all of these pulse points to a computer for continuous monitoring,’ said Robert Amelard, a PhD candidate in systems design engineering at Waterloo and recipient of the prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. ‘By way of comparison, think of measuring the traffic flow across an entire city rather than through one intersection.’

Continuous data collection at different parts of the body provides a more complete picture of what

New research demonstrates that the six-step hand-hygiene technique recommended by the World Health Organization is superior to a three-step method suggested by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in reducing bacteria on healthcare workers