Mammalian heart regeneration after acute heart attacks can be induced by decellularized zebrafish cardiac extracellular matrix.

Background and Objectives The three‐dimensional (3D)‐printed bone tumor resection guide can be personalized for a specific patient and utilized for bone tumor surgery. It is noninvasive, eidetic, and easy to use. We aimed to categorize the use of the 3D‐printed guide and establish in vivo accuracy data. Methods We retrospectively reviewed 12 patients, who underwent limb salvage surgery using the 3D‐printed guide at a single institution. To confirm the achievement of a safe bone margin, we compared the actual and planned distances between the cutting surface and tumor, which were reported in the final pathological report and measured from the same virtual cutting plane using graphical data of the cutting guide design, respectively. Results The use of the 3D‐printed guide was categorized as follows: (a) wide excision only, (b) wide excision and biological reconstruction with a structural bone allograft shaped in accordance with the 3D‐printed guide, and (c) wide excision and reconstruction with a 3D‐printed personalized implant. The maximal cutting error was 3 mm. Conclusions The 3D‐printed resection guide is easy to use and shows promise in the field of orthopedic oncology, with its application in bone tumor resection and reconstruction with a structural bone allograft or 3D‐printed implant.

Vascular access is essential for hemodialysis patients. The mature native arteriovenous fistula has been the preferred vascular access for hemodialysis, because it has greater longevity than synthetic grafts. However, once surgically created, fistulas often fail to develop (mature) into viable points of vascular access, requiring surgical or radiologic interventions before their use. Because maturation depends on vascular mechanics (e.g., distensibility and wall shear), we developed open-source ultrasound software to investigate these metrics clinically. We demonstrated in a single patient the ability of the software for consistent measurements from various locations within a cardiac cycle and between different cardiac cycles. We further assessed the ability of the software to identify changes in distensibility of a patient's fistula from 1 to 6 weeks postoperation. The routine frame rates of clinical machines demonstrated high fidelity tracking within cardiac cycles (coefficient of variation [CV] = 2.4% ± 0.011) and between cardiac cycles (CV = 2.4% ± 0.004). The distensibility of the patient's fistula from 1 to 6 weeks postoperation increased from 4% to 7% in the arterial inflow and from 3% to 4% in the postarterial anastomotic segment (PAAS). In contrast, the distensibility of the outflow vein decreased from 4% to 2%. These results corroborate that in addition to diameter changes, the mechanical properties of the vascular segments changed during fistula maturation. This demonstrates that our software-based approach may allow ultrasound-based mechanical measurements to become more accessible for wider clinical research.

This study demonstrates that the change in vessel diameter and distensibility related to the healthy remodeling as the vein dilates during maturation.

This study measures the vascular wall shear rate at the vessel edge using decorrelation based ultrasound speckle tracking. Results for nine healthy and eight renal disease subjects are presented. Additionally, the vascular wall shear rate and circumferential strain during physiologic pressure, pressure equalization and hyperemia are compared for five healthy and three renal disease subjects. The mean and maximum wall shear rates were measured during the cardiac cycle at the top and bottom wall edges. The healthy subjects had significantly higher mean and maximum vascular wall shear rate than the renal disease subjects. The key findings of this research were that the mean vascular wall shear rates and circumferential strain changes between physiologic pressure and hyperemia that was significantly different between healthy and renal disease subjects.