Journal and News Scan

 3D printers are slowly entering everyday life and they are increasingly being used in medicine. Doctors at Washington's Children's National Medical Center say the life-size tri-dimensional prints of their patients' hearts helps them in planning and executing surgeries. Magnetic resonance imaging, computer tomography and ultrasound already give pretty good images of patients' internal organs, but doctors at the Children's National Medical Center say nothing beats holding a life-size model of a heart in your hand prior to the surgery. They can study it, plan the procedure and even practice the access to the damaged area. Pediatric cardiologist Laura Olivieri says many of their young patients were born with hearts that did not form as they should have, but surgeons can correct that. "Seeing the heart defect in three dimensions can really help the interventionist or the surgeon plan the best procedure," she said. The hospital acquired the $250,000 printer about 18 months ago and the team is still expanding and finding new areas to print. The procedure always starts with taking a set of three-dimensional images with magnetic resonance imager, computer tomography scanner and ultrasound machine. Highly trained pediatric cardiologists manipulate those images and separate the organ from the noise in the picture. In order to save time in printing they sometimes also cut away parts of the image irrelevant to the planned procedure.

The USPST updated its review on lung cancer screening utilizing RTCs and cohort studies.  One trial reported that screening resulted in important reductions in cancer and all-cause mortality.  Three trials reported no benefit but were underpowered.  They conclude that screening offers benefit but is associated with potential harm that must be taken into consideration.

In this manuscript the authors investigate the effect of the intracoronary injection of autologus cardiac stem cells (CSCs) in chronic ischemic cardiomyopathy in pigs.  CSCs were obtained from the pigs’ right atrium. Three groups were created. Groups II and III underwent a 90 minute occlusion of the left anterior descending artery in order to cause an anterior myocardial infarction (MI). Group I served as control. At 3 to 4 months after MI, pigs received intracoronary infusion of vehicle (group II), or autologous CSCs into the infarct-related artery by the use of a balloon catheter (group III). Echocardiographic and hemodynamic assessment of cardiac function was performed before treatment and at the time of euthanasia at 31 days after vehicle/CSC therapy. Morphometric and histological  studies were also carried out. CSC-treated pigs exhibited significantly greater LV ejection fraction, systolic thickening fraction in the infarcted left ventricular wall, and maximum LV dP/dt, as well as lower LV end-diastolic pressure. Microscopic  findings were consistent with cardiac regeneration. These findings were in keeping with those recently published on humans in the SCIPIO trial.

The newest set of guidelines for managing early and regionally advanced NSCLC from the ESMO focuses on screening, staging algorithms, risk assessment, and treatment options.