TOPOT may be an effective and safe approach for robotic thyroid surgery.

Owing to the trend of faster and denser circuit design, the dielectric properties of packaging materials for semi‐conductors will have greater influence on performance and reliability. Also, as chips become more densely packaged, thermal dissipation becomes a critical reliability issue. Consequently, four important properties for manufacturing semi‐conductor packaging are: low values of dielectric constants, high values of thermal conductivity, relatively low values of thermal expansion coefficients, and low cost. Thus, in this study, AlN (Aluminum Nitride) was selected as the filler for an epoxy matrix to achieve increased performance of an EMC. As a result, the thermal conductivity of an EMC filled with 70 vol% of AlN increased as much as 7–8 times compared with the EMC filled with a crystalline silica (vol. 70%). When more than 60 vol% of AlN was added to the EMC, the dielectric constants and thermal expansion coefficient decreased rapidly.

Robotic thyroidectomy using BABA may be a technically feasible and safe procedure comparable to conventional open surgery especially in node-negative patients.

We analyzed breast cancer subtypes using Korean Breast Cancer Society Registration Program data to compare clinical features and prognosis for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). A cohort of 26,767 breast cancer patients were divided in four groups: luminal A (ER+ and/or PR+, HER2-), luminal B (ER+ and/or PR+ HER2+), HER2+ (ER-, PR-, HER2+), and triple-negative (ER-, PR-, HER2-). Clinicopathologic factors were evaluated. The luminal A (14,437 patients, 53.9%) subtype was the largest in our study. Compared with luminal A subtype, TNBC correlated with younger age, more aggressive characteristics and poor overall survival and breast cancer-specific survival. The hazard rate showed a peak at 24 months for the TNBC subtype, but after 60 months, risk was similar to that of the luminal A subtype. Higher T, N stage and histologic grade, and lymphatic and vascular invasion showed poor prognosis in TNBC patients, but on multivariate analysis only histologic grade and ki-67 status were related. Young age was related to poor prognosis in the luminal A subtype, however, age was not related to prognosis in the TNBC subtype. Of the 5,586 TNBC patients, 282 patients (7.11%) expired within 3 years of diagnosis. T and N stage and grade were significantly associated with prognosis on multivariate analysis. TNBC subtype is characterized by younger age with poorer outcome. However, younger age is not related to prognosis, and mortality risk decreases to that of the luminal A subtype, which is known to have the best prognosis after a few years.

PurposeAmong more than 500 microRNAs, microRNA-21 (miR-21) is known to act as an oncogene. The aim of this study was to investigate the significance of miR-21 expression level in relation with clinicopathological factors and prognosis in breast cancer.MethodsMicroRNA was extracted from cancer and normal breast tissue of 109 breast cancer patients who underwent surgery from 2002 to 2004 using the Taqman® MicroRNA Assay. The correlation between miR-21 expression and clinicopathologic features was analyzed and the significance of miR-21 as a prognostic factor and its relationship with survival was determined.ResultsMiR-21 expression was higher in cancer tissues than in normal tissues (p<0.0001). High miR-21 expression was associated with mastectomy, larger tumor size, higher stage, higher grade, estrogen receptor (ER) negative, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) positive, HER2 positive breast cancer subtype, high Ki-67 expression, and death. On multivariate analysis, prognostic factors for overall survival were ER and miR-21. High miR-21 expression was significantly related to lower overall survival (p=0.031).ConclusionThis study supports the role of miR-21 as an oncogene and a biomarker for breast cancer with its high expression in cancer tissues and its relationship with other prognostic factors and survival.