No abstract

Aquamid has provided a minimally invasive, effective, long-lasting facial contour correction that significantly improves the quality of life in human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients.

The peak stress method (PSM) is an engineering, finite element (FE)‐oriented method to rapidly estimate the notch stress intensity factors by using the singular linear elastic peak stresses calculated from coarse FE analyses. The average element size adopted to generate the mesh pattern can be chosen arbitrarily within a given range. Originally, the PSM has been calibrated under pure mode I and pure mode II loadings by means of Ansys FE software. In the present contribution, a round robin between 10 Italian universities has been carried out to calibrate the PSM with 7 different commercial FE codes. To this aim, several two‐dimensional mode I and mode II problems have been analysed independently by the participants. The obtained results have been used to calibrate the PSM for given stress analysis conditions in (i) FE software, (ii) element type and element formulation, (iii) mesh pattern, and (iv) criteria for stress extrapolation and principal stress analysis at FE nodes.

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The aim of this observational, prospective, nonrandomized study was to assess long-term psychometric outcomes of surgical treatment of HIV-related facial lipoatrophy. Two hundred ninety-nine participants (70.8% male) consecutively attending the Metabolic Clinic of Modena and Reggio Emilia University from November 2005 to July 2006, undergoing surgical interventions for HIV-related facial lipoatrophy were enrolled. Fifty-four (18.1%) underwent facial lipofilling, which consists of the harvesting of a small, intact parcel of fatty tissue with processing that removes the nonviable components and of the transport of fatty parcels through a small cannula to implant the graft in a manner that provides nutrition and anchors the fat to the host tissue. After an initial lipofilling, 24 (8%) needed polylactic acid injections to correct cheek asymmetry, 91 (30.4%) received only polylactic acid infiltrations, and 130 (43.5%) polyacrylamide infiltrations only. Subjective outcome measures were face aesthetic satisfaction, body image perception, depression evaluated by a visual analogue scale (VAS), the Assessment of Body Change and Distress questionnaire (ABCD), and by the Beck Depression Inventory questionnaire, respectively. Objective measure was cheek thickness evaluated by a 7.5-MHz frequency ultrasound probe perpendicular to the skin surface at the nasolabial fold, the corner of the mouth, the zygomatic arch, and centrally between these points in the buccal fat pad area. Both subjective and objective variables were evaluated at baseline and 48 weeks after end of surgical treatment. All 299 participants had significant improvement of the aesthetic satisfaction for the face (VAS from 2.9 +/- 2.1 to 6.2 +/- 2.1, p < 0.0001), of body image satisfaction (ABCD question 7 from 3.8 +/- 1 to 3.1 +/- 1 p < 0.0001 and ABCD question 8 from 70.7 +/- 16.7 to 77.2 +/- 17.2 p < 0.0001), of depression score (Beck score from 11.4 +/- 8.3 to 9.4 +/- 7.8 p = 0.001). Participants experienced a significant augmentation of both cheeks' thickness (right cheek from 4.3 +/- 1.9 mm to 9.5 +/- 3 mm p < 0.0001, left cheek from 4.4 +/- 2 mm to 9.6 +/- 3.1 mm, p < 0.0001). Our data suggest that facial surgery is an important option in the treatment of HIV-related lipoatrophy as an integral part of the management of HIV infection, because of the important and lasting psychological benefits.

We conclude that the medical and surgical interventions proposed in this multidisciplinary therapeutic approach are efficacious and safe in the management of lipodystrophy.

This paper describes the properties and the engineering applications of the smart materials, especially in the mechatronics field. Even though there are several smart materials which all are very interesting from the research perspective, we decide to focus the work on just three of them. The adopted criterion privileges the most promising technologies in terms of commercial applications available on the market, namely: magnetorheological fluids, shape memory alloys and piezoelectric materials. Many semi-active devices such as dampers or brakes or clutches, based on magnetorheological fluids are commercially available; in addition, we can trace several applications of piezo actuators and shape memory-based devices, especially in the field of micro actuations. The work describes the physics behind these three materials and it gives some basic equations to dimension a system based on one of these technologies. The work helps the designer in a first feasibility study for the applications of one of these smart materials inside an industrial context. Moreover, the paper shows a complete survey of the applications of magnetorheological fluids, piezoelectric devices and shape memory alloys that have hit the market, considering industrial, biomedical, civil and automotive field

Therapeutic, IV.