Journal of the American College of Surgeons
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The success of parathyroidectomy in primary hyperparathyroidism depends on the intraoperative differentiation of diseased from normal glands. Deep learning can potentially be applied to digitalize this subjective interpretation process that relies heavily on surgeon expertise. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether diseased versus normal parathyroid glands have different near-infrared autofluorescence (NIRAF) signatures and whether related deep learning models can predict normal versus diseased parathyroid glands based on intraoperative in-vivo images. ⋯ Normal and diseased parathyroid glands in primary hyperparathyroidism have different intraoperative NIRAF patterns that could be quantified with intensity and heterogeneity analyses. Visual deep learning models relying on these NIRAF signatures could be built to assist surgeons in differentiating normal from diseased parathyroid glands.
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Firearms are the leading cause of death among U.S. children and adolescents. This study evaluates whether state gun laws are associated with firearm suicides and homicides in children. ⋯ Firearm legislation is associated with decreased suicide rates for individuals under 18, but its influence on homicides is less certain. Comprehensive research and thoughtful policy formulation are essential for addressing this pressing public health concern.
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William Halsted wrote to aging surgeon, Stephen Smith, in 1919, that he remembered the lessons Smith had taught him, "when I walked with you through the wards of Bellevue Hospital." Smith was an early advocate of Joseph Lister's antiseptic method, and because of his public health work, he was also an early advocate of environmental hygiene and microbial control based on the unproved germ theory. While Lister's work at the time emphasized germ-killing around the operative site with carbolic acid (antisepsis), Smith adopted and encouraged surgical practices at Bellevue that would be hallmarks of the germ-preventing (asepsis) surgical approach that fully developed after German bacteriologic discoveries in the mid-1880s, and with which Halsted is historically identified. Some physicians and historians have emphasized temporal and conceptual differences between Lister's antisepsis and German asepsis, but Smith and Halsted's experiences argue that surgical asepsis was the evolutionary outcome of germ theory-based surgical changes that began well before scientific proof arrived.