Objectives:To study the demographic and clinical features of infantile hemangioma in China; to learn in more detail the risk factors for developing this disease; and to identify clinical characteristics associated with complications, associated risks, and the need for systemic treatment.Design: A case-control study of 1832 prospectively enrolled children with hemangiomas and 1832 controls matched for age, sex, region, and hospital attending the dermatology department between 2005 and 2008.Setting: Two large hospitals in central south China.Patients: A total of 1832 children with hemangiomas. Main Outcome Measures:Demographic and clinical presentations were summarized and compared with data from previous studies of hemangiomas. Predictive clinical factors for complications and/or treatment and potential risk factors for infantile hemangioma were analyzed by logistic regression. Results:The clinical features of our study patients were different from those of other race/ethnicity groups reported by previous studies with regard to the morphologic subtypes, complications, and predictors for complications and/ or oral corticosteroid treatment. After adjustment, significant risk factors for hemangiomas included lower level of maternal education (odds ratio [OR], 0.61; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.57-0.66), mother engaged in manual labor (OR, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.12-1.48), multiple gestation (OR, 1.20; 95% CI,1.05-1.36), maternal medication use during the periconceptional period (OR, 2.08; 95% CI, 1.88-2.31), and a positive family history of hemangiomas (OR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.40-1.72). Conclusion:Besides yielding several new findings with respect to risk factors for hemangiomas, the current study also suggests that the Chinese clinical features of hemangiomas are somewhat different epidemiologically from those in the West.

Cerebral vasospasm (CVS) is a common and severe complication of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Despite the improvement in treatment of aSAH, CVS complicating aSAH has remained the main cause of death. CVS begins most often on the third day after the ictal event and reaches the maximum on the 5th-7th postictal days. Several therapeutic modalities have been employed to prevent or reverse CVS. The aim of this review is to summate all the available drug treatment modalities for vasospasm.

This paper proposes a novel detection scheme simultaneously to measure strain and temperature, based on a simple to construct device using a section of a specially designed few mode fiber (FMF). The parameters and index profile of the FMF used as the key sensor element are such that the fiber supports only the LP01 and LP02 modes. The propagation constant difference between LP01 and LP02 modes, Δβ, has a maximum corresponding to the critical wavelength (CWL) in the fiber transmission spectrum. Because the two peaks located closest to the CWL from both sides, Left Peak 1 and Right Peak 1, shift in opposite directions, with different sensitivities under axial strain and temperature variations, the FMF device is capable of measuring the strain and temperature simultaneously. A theoretical analysis has been carried out as part of the design process and the experimental results obtained are found to agree well with the theoretical predictions. The characteristics of this sensor scheme is discussed in light of other competing approaches to simultaneous temperature and strain monitoring and is found to show advantages which suit several practical applications including compactness, ease of fabrication and implementation, relatively high sensitivities and low cost.

Ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) is an important cause of adverse prognosis after recanalization in patients with acute occlusion of major intracranial artery (AOMIA). Here, we provided data indicating that gradual flow restoration (GFR) would be superior to rapid flow restoration (RFR) in alleviating cerebral IRIs in middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) rats. A total of 94 MCAO rats with 15, 30 and 60-minute occlusion were randomly assigned to receive either GFR or RFR intervention. There were significant differences between GFR and RFR group in mean neurological severity score (1.02 versus 1.28; p < 0.05), median infarct ratio (0.016 versus 0.12; p < 0.001), median neuronal apoptosis ratio (1.81 versus 14.46; p < 0.001), and mean histopathological abnormality score (0.92 versus 1.66; p < 0.001). In addition, these differences were mainly distributed in 30-minute and 60-minute occlusion rats, not in 15-minute occlusion rats. These results indicated that GFR rather than RFR could effectively alleviate cerebral IRIs in MCAO rats, especially in rats with longer occlusion duration, suggesting that GFR may be particularly applicable to AOMIA patients who are presented to neurointerventionalists in the later-time of recanalization therapy window.