The leakage of cytotoxic drugs, intravenous nutrition, solutions of calcium, potassium, bicarbonate and even 10% dextrose outside the vein into which they are delivered is known not only to cause skin necrosis but also to precipitate significant scarring around tendons, nerves and joints. In this review of 96 patients with extravasation injuries seen between 1987 and 1992 at St Thomas' Hospital, Mount Vernon Hospital and The Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, several patients required extensive reconstruction and in some, despite this, extravasation injury has rendered a limb virtually useless. Two techniques, liposuction and saline flushout, are described to remove extravasated material while conserving the overlying skin. Analysis of flushout material confirmed that the extravasated material was actually being removed. Forty four of the study group in whom noxious materials were known to have extravasated underwent such early treatment. The results in this group were quite striking--the majority (86%) healed without any soft tissue loss at all. The early referral and treatment of extravasation injuries is, therefore, recommended.

This was a retrospective study examining the psychosocial morbidity of patients before and after ear reconstruction. Semistructured questionnaires were sent to 90 patents with significant congenital or acquired auricular deformity 2.2 years (range 3 months to 5 years) following autogenous or osteointegrated reconstruction. Sixty-two patients (69%) responded. Twenty-two of the patients below 12 years, who had undergone reconstructive surgery, also completed the Childhood Experience Questionnaire. These were compared with a cohort of 362 normal patients. There was significant psychosocial morbidity in both children and adults with auricular deformity. Seventy-one percent of patients reported reduced self-confidence that affected both social life and leisure activity. Teasing was a prominent symptom in both children (88%) and adults (85%) but was a motivational factor for surgery in children only. Dissatisfaction with the appearance (73.1%), on the other hand, was the main reason for treatment in adults. Following ear reconstruction, 74% of adults and 91% of children reported an improvement in self-confidence resulting in enhanced social life and leisure activities in both adults and children. There was no difference between osteointegrated and autogenous reconstruction. Sixty percent of patients reported their result as excellent. The patients scored their result better than the surgeon. We conclude that auricular reconstruction has significant psychosocial benefit in the majority of children and adults despite donor-site morbidity and a range of technical result.

No abstract

The rapid pace of innovation in biological imaging and the diversity of its applications have prevented the establishment of a community-agreed standardized data format. We propose that complementing established open formats such as OME-TIFF and HDF5 with a next-generation file format such as Zarr will satisfy the majority of use cases in bioimaging. Critically, a common metadata format used in all these vessels can deliver truly findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable bioimaging data.

To improve the outcome for patients undergoing cartilage harvest, efforts must be made to further reduce pain and donor-site morbidity. Reconstruction of the donor site with spare cartilage should be attempted where possible to improve the contour defect of the donor site. Refinements in the methods of cartilage harvest or donor-site reconstruction may achieve this in the future.