Sphere Medical, an innovative company in critical care monitoring and diagnostics equipment, announces that its Proxima™ bedside blood gas monitoring system is compatible with Philips IntelliVue Patient Monitoring Systems through the Philips IntelliBridge Interface Module.
Sphere Medical’s Proxima is an acute respiratory and metabolic monitoring system used in critical care settings which supports proactive patient care, particularly at critical times.  It enables rapid and frequent blood gas, glucose and electrolyte measurements directly at the bedside without the caregiver leaving the patient. Philips compatibility means that Proxima’s results can be recorded and displayed alongside other critical monitoring information, such as blood pressure, ECG, EEG, respiratory rate, cardiac output and temperature. Such consolidated information gives a comprehensive patient overview, enhancing patient management. With the increasing adoption of electronic data record systems in critical care settings, Philips compatibility will also give Proxima customers a very simple means of integrating their data into electronic medical record systems (EMR).
Commenting on the additional point-of-care connectivity functionality of the Proxima bedside blood gas analyser, Wolfgang Rencken, CEO of Sphere Medical said, “We are extremely pleased with the confirmation that Proxima is compatible with Philips IntelliVue patient monitors through the Philips IntelliBridge EC10 medical device interfacing module. Many of our customers use Philips monitoring and data management systems and this connectivity further helps the practical implementation of Proxima as an acute respiratory and metabolic monitoring device in critical care settings.”
www.spheremedical.com

University of Sheffield scientists discover drug used for arthritis could be used to treat blood cancer
Every year 3,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with Polycythemia Vera (PV), a type of blood cancer which causes an overproduction of red blood cells. Patients suffer with itching, headaches, weight loss, fatigue and night sweats.
Current treatments do not slow the disease progression and provide little relief from symptoms.
Dr Martin Zeidler, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Biomedical Science, working with colleagues from the Department of Haematology at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) have discovered that methotrexate (MTX) – a drug on the World Health Organisation list of essential medicines and commonly used to treat arthritis – works by directly inhibiting the molecular pathway responsible for causing disease.
Initial tests were carried out on fruit fly cells to screen for small molecules that modulate JAK/STAT signalling – a signalling pathway whose misregulation is central to the development in humans of Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), the collective term for progressive blood cancers like PV.
Further testing in human cells showed that methotrexate acts as a potent suppressor of JAK/STAT pathway activation – even in cells carrying the mutated gene responsible for MPNs in patients.
Dr Martin Zeidler said the latest tests on mice were entirely consistent with the cell-based studies.
The tests showed low-dose MTX suppresses JAK/STAT pathway activity and is able to normalise both the raised blood counts and the increase in spleen size associated with the disease in these mice.
“We have now shown pretty conclusively that we can use this approach to treat mouse models of human MPNs, results which provide a much more tangible prospect of success in humans,” he said.
“Repurposing MTX has the potential to provide a new, molecularly targeted treatment for MPN patients within a budget accessible to healthcare systems throughout the world – a development that may ultimately provide substantial clinical and health economic benefits.”
MTX has been used for 35 years to treat inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and psoriasis. Even though the mechanisms by which MTX acts in these diseases had not previously been understood, the safety and effectiveness of MTX is well documented and many millions of patients regularly take the drug. Strikingly, diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis all feature inflammatory processes driven by JAK/STAT activity and the effectiveness of MTX in these inflammatory diseases may well be a consequence of its ability to dampen the JAK/STAT pathway.

The University of Sheffield www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/blood-cancer-athritis-1.720503

Video laryngoscopy did not improve first-pass orotracheal intubation rates in the intensive care unit (ICU) and was associated with higher rates of life-threatening complications, in a multicentre study in France.
“Previous studies have shown conflicting results regarding the systematic use of video laryngoscopy for intubation in the ICU,” Dr. Jean Baptiste Lascarrou of District Hospital Center in La Roche Sur Yon told Reuters Health by email. Part of the reason could be that, in contrast to the operating room, “intubation in the ICU is frequently performed by residents and patients are in acute respiratory and/or circulatory failure.”
In 2015 and 2016, Dr. Lascarrou and colleagues at seven ICUs in France randomized 371 adults (mean age, 63; 37% women) to intubation with the McGrath Mac Videolaryngoscope or the Macintosh Laryngoscope.
The proportion of patients with successful first-pass intubation did not differ significantly between the groups (67.7% for video versus 70.3% for direct laryngoscopy; P=0.60).
Similarly, the proportion of first-attempt intubations performed by non-experts – mainly residents – did not differ between the groups (84.4% with video versus 83.2% with direct laryngoscopy; P=0.76). For video laryngoscopy, first intubation attempts were successful more often when performed by experts (55 of 60 patients, or 91.7%) versus non-experts (201 of 311 patients, or 64.6%; P=0.001)
Median time to successful intubation was three minutes for both groups (P=0.95).
The proportion of patients with severe life-threatening complications was higher in the video group compared to the direct laryngoscopy group (9.5% versus 2.8%, respectively; P=0.01). No significant between-group difference was found for mild-to-moderate life-threatening complications.
Dr. Lascarrou noted that “the frequency of life-threatening complications was relatively low overall compared to older studies, probably due to the systematic application of an intubation protocol that includes pre-oxygenation and neuromuscular blockade use.”
Nonetheless, he concluded, “Clinicians have a long way to go before the intubation process is safer in the ICU.”
Editorialists Drs. Brian O’Gara and Daniel Talmor, from the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told Reuters Health, “This trial illustrates an important concept in modern medicine. The proliferation and increased availability of sophisticated devices such as the video laryngoscope with proven benefit in limited populations may sometimes lead clinicians to assume that such benefits can be applied to larger patient groups.”
“Studies such as (this) are important so that clinicians who may be using such devices can be informed as to their potential benefit or harm in patient groups who are different from the originally intended population,” they said by email.

Medscapehttp://tinyurl.com/y9ddlxov

A new randomized clinical trial of a pilot program found that a brief in-person intervention can improve psychosocial health in a particularly vulnerable population – adolescents and young adults living with cancer.
Psychosocial stress from cancer is common and is often a major detriment to quality of life. For example, one type of stress is anxiety over how to navigate the demands of the disease. Although many programs provide some level of psychosocial support for patients and families, very few provide standardized tools to manage this stress.
The intervention, called Promoting Resilience in Stress Management, or PRISM, improved resilience and quality of life, increased hope, and lowered distress in the majority of patients.
“The experience of cancer is stressful in all realms, but we tend to focus more on physical symptoms than the equally important social and emotional challenges,” said lead study author Abby R. Rosenberg, MD, Director of Palliative Care and Resilience Research at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. “This is particularly true for adolescents and young adults who already struggle with normal developmental changes. When you throw cancer into the mix, it can become much harder.”
PRISM emerged from a theory of resilience that puts forth three sets of resources that can help manage adversity: internal resources, such as stress-management or mindfulness skills; community resources, such as social support; and existential resources, such as spirituality and the search for purpose. In prior research, the investigators found that internal and existential resources were more teachable than tapping community resources. PRISM was tested in an earlier feasibility study with young patients with either diabetes or cancer.
In this clinical trial, 100 English-speaking patients ages 12 to 25 years who were diagnosed with new or newly recurrent cancer were randomly assigned to receive PRISM or usual psychosocial care. The intervention was delivered in four 30-minute to hour-long one-on-one sessions with a trained research associate, followed by a family meeting. PRISM cultivated internal resilience resources that strengthen stress management and goal-setting, as well as existential resilience resources that strengthen cognitive reframing and meaning-making.
“Meaning-making is basically deriving some personal perspective or purpose from adversity,” said Dr. Rosenberg. “For example, we found that many young cancer patients in our study identified things for which they were grateful, despite their cancer experience.”
Regardless of which group they were in, all participants received standard psychosocial supportive care, including a dedicated social worker and access to psychologists, child-life specialists, and other experts in adolescent and young adult oncology care, as needed.
Patients completed surveys at enrollment and six months later. The authors found that the intervention improved psychosocial well-being.
Specifically, among the 74 participants who remained alive and well enough to complete the 6-month survey (36 in the intervention group and 38 in the usual care group), those who received the intervention had improvements in resilience, cancer-related quality of life, hope, and distress compared with those who received usual psychosocial care. In addition, the incidence of depression was much lower in the intervention group compared with the usual care group (6% vs. 21%).
All but four of the PRISM recipients chose to participate in the family meeting following their one-on-one skills-training sessions. “We included the family meeting because teens told us they wanted to share with their parents, and parents told us they wanted to know what their children had learned,” said Dr. Rosenberg. “While the specific impact of this meeting is yet to be determined, we hope it will guide families so that there is continued support of teen or young adult patients.”
“We need to include a much larger cultural demographic in future studies,” said Dr. Rosenberg. “Beyond that, we also need to determine if this type of intervention could translate to other centers where usual care may not be as comprehensive as what we have here.”
The investigators would also like to test PRISM in patients with advanced cancers and possibly expand to other diseases, such as cystic fibrosis.
American Society of Clinical Oncology
www.asco.org/about-asco/press-center/news-releases/resilience-intervention-improves-well-being-young-patients

A UBC Okanagan researcher has discovered a new artificial bone design that can be customized and made with a 3D printer for stronger, safer and more effective bone replacements.
Hossein Montazerian, research assistant with UBC Okanagan’s School of Engineering, has identified a way to model and create artificial bone grafts that can be custom printed. Montazerian says human bones are incredibly resilient, but when things go wrong, replacing them can be a painful process, requiring multiple surgeries.
“When designing artificial bone scaffolds it’s a fine balance between something that is porous enough to mix with natural bone and connective tissue, but at the same time strong enough for patients to lead a normal life,” says Montazerian. “We’ve identified a design that strikes that balance and can be custom built using a 3D printer.”
Traditional bone grafting is used in medicine to treat anything from traumatic fractures to defects, and requires moving bone from one part of the body to another. But Montazerian says his artificial bone grafts could be custom printed to potentially fit any patient and wouldn’t require transplanting existing bone fragments.
In his research, Montazerian analysed 240 different bone graft designs and focused on just the ones that were both porous and strong. He printed those that performed the best using a 3D printer and then ran physical tests to determine how effective they would be under load in the real world.
“A few of the structures really stood out,” Montazerian adds. “The best designs were up to 10 times stronger than the others and since they have properties that are much more similar to natural bone, they’re less likely to cause problems over the long term.”
Montazerian and his collaborators are already working on the next generation of designs that will use a mix of two or more structures.
“We hope to produce bone grafts that will be ultra-porous, where the bone and connective tissues meet and are extra-strong at the points under the most stress. The ultimate goal is to produce a replacement that almost perfectly mimics real bone.”
While his bone graft designs are well on their way, Montazerian says the technology still needs some advances before it can be used clinically. For example, he says other researchers in the field are starting to refine biomaterials that won’t be rejected by the body and that can be printed with the very fine 3D details that his designs require.
“This solution has enormous potential and the next step will be to test how our designs behave in real biological systems,” he says. “I hope to see this kind of technology clinically implemented for real patients in the near future.”

UBC’s Okanagan campus
news.ok.ubc.ca/2017/08/17/ubc-researcher-looks-to-the-future-of-bone-replacements/