When dealing with deep neck infections in a high-risk group (older patients with DM or other underlying systemic diseases) in the clinic, more attention should be paid to the prevention of complications and even the possibility of death. Early surgical drainage remains the main method of treating deep neck abscesses. Therapeutic needle aspiration and conservative medical treatment are effective in selective cases such as those with minimal abscess formation.

Patients with diabetes mellitus are susceptible to deep neck infection. We should pay more attention when dealing with deep neck infections in patients with diabetes mellitus because those patients tend to have complications more frequently and a longer duration of hospital stay. Empirical antibiotics should cover K. pneumoniae in patients with deep neck infection who have diabetes mellitus.

Tropical Storm Bopha (2000) showed a very unusual southward course parallel to the east coast of Taiwan, mainly steered by the circulation associated with Supertyphoon Saomai (2000) to Bopha's east. The binary interaction between the two typhoons is well demonstrated by the potential vorticity (PV) diagnosis. With the use of the piecewise PV inversion, this paper quantitatively evaluates how Bopha moved southward due to the binary interaction with Saomai. A newly proposed centroid-relative track, with the position weighting based on the steering flow induced by the PV anomaly associated with the other storm, is plotted to highlight such binary interaction processes. Note that the above analysis can be well used to understand the more complicated vortex merging and interacting processes between tropical cyclones either from observational data or numerical experiments. The results also shed some light on the prediction of nearby tropical cyclones.

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