The morphogenesis of midfacial processes requires the coordination of a variety of cellular functions of both mesenchymal and epithelial cells to develop complex structures. Any failure or delay in midfacial development as well as any abnormal fusion of the medial and lateral nasal and maxillary prominences will result in developmental defects in the midface with a varying degree of severity, including cleft, hypoplasia, and midline expansion. In spite of the advances in human genome sequencing technology, the causes of nearly 70 percent of all birth defects, which include midfacial development defects, remain unknown. Recent studies in animal models have highlighted the importance of specific signaling cascades and genetic-environmental interactions in the development of the midfacial region. This review will summarize the current understanding of the morphogenetic processes and molecular mechanisms underlying midfacial birth defects based on mouse models with midfacial developmental abnormalities.

To support the global restart of elective surgery, data from an international prospective cohort study of 8492 patients (69 countries) was analysed using artificial intelligence (machine learning techniques) to develop a predictive score for mortality in surgical patients with SARS-CoV-2. We found that patient rather than operation factors were the best predictors and used these to create the COVIDsurg Mortality Score (https://covidsurgrisk.app). Our data demonstrates that it is safe to restart a wide range of surgical services for selected patients.

This paper presents the identification of clause boundary for the Urdu language. We have used Conditional Random Field as the classification method and the clause markers. The clause markers play the role to detect the type of subordinate clause, which is with or within the main clause. If there is any misclassification after testing with different sentences then more rules are identified to get high recall and precision. Obtained results show that this approach efficiently determines the type of subordinate clause and its boundary. Index terms-Clause marker, conditional random field.

Purpose The SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic has resulted in widespread changes to healthcare practices across the United States. The purpose of this study is to examine the incidence of COVID-19 patients in the oral-maxillofacial surgery setting in order to help guide perioperative protocols during the pandemic. Methods In this retrospective cohort study, predictor variables (presence of preoperative symptoms on presentation, patient age, patient gender, patient race, hospital location, and presence of statewide stay-at-home orders) were examined with outcome variables (SARS-CoV-2 test results) over 10 months between 03/2020 and 12/2020 for patients undergoing surgical procedures in the operating room by the following Oral-Maxillofacial Surgery Departments: - Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (Baton Rouge, LA) - University of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago, IL) - University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (Houston, TX) Data analysis included Fisher exact tests to compare categorical variables across COVID test groups and Wilcoxon rank sum tests to compare continuous covariates. Two-sample tests of proportions were used to compare observed COVID-19 positivity rates to other study results. Results Out of 684 patients in 3 institutions, 17 patients (2.5%, 95% CI = 1.5%-4.0%) tested positive for COVID-19 over a 10 month interval (03/01/2020- 12/31/2020). The majority of patients that tested positive were asymptomatic in the preoperative setting (p-value=.09). They were significantly more likely to be African-American (p-value=.015) and less likely to have a stay-at-home order present at the time of surgery (p-value=.033). Age, gender, and hospital location did not play a statistically significant role. Conclusion Our results demonstrate a 2.5% incidence of COVID-19 infection in the total population of patients undergoing scheduled oral-maxillofacial surgeries in 3 major healthcare systems across the United States. This data may help inform perioperative protocols and infection control measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.