Autogenous fascia lata may be used as an alternative to a silicone band for superior oblique lengthening in future.

Iranian researchers from Ophthalmology Department of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences presented a new method for superior oblique overactions.
“Patients who have superior oblique overactions have reading difficulties. Superior oblique lengthening with a silicone retinal band is used to treat superior oblique overaction (SOOA). However, secondary infection, implant extrusion, orbital cellulitis and adhesion may occur,“ said Mohammad Reza Talebnejad, who led the study, ISNA said.
“We present a method of superior oblique tendon elongation in which autogenous fascia lata is used to decrease the likelihood of these complications.“
He added that six patients (5 female, 1 male) ages 7-22 years with 40-85€ exotropia and SOOA (range, +2 to +4; mean, +3.5) underwent bilateral superior oblique lengthening with the insertion of fascia lata.
In the last two cases, the values of elongation were augmented by 2 mm. Fascia lata was harvested through a linear incision on the lateral aspect of the patient’s thigh.
He further said correction of A-pattern exotropia to within 10€ was achieved in 66 percent of the cases as well as correction of SOOA to within +1 in 58 percent of the cases, with a follow-up of 9 months.
“All patients with +2 to +3 SOOA (3 cases) were fully corrected, whereas those with +4 SOOA (9 eyes) had residual overaction of +1 to +3. In eyes with augmented elongation, residual SOOA was between 0 and +2. No patient developed superior oblique palsy,“ he said.
The ophthalmologist noted that autogenous fascia lata may be used as an alternative to a silicone band for superior oblique lengthening.
“Our results were comparable with published results for the silicone band, with a lower rate of overcorrection,“ he said.
Talebnejade said the improved biocompatibility makes it likely that autogenous fascia lata will have a lower complication rate than with a silicone band.

Young gymnasts now appear to be developing injuries well beyond one common to their sport, a new study says.
Injuries to gymnasts’ bones--especially the growing portions--are well known, but previously unseen damage to the wrists and knuckles, including necrosis--or “early death“--of the bones of the knuckles has been found, according to a study expected to be presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, in Chicago, HealthDay reported.
“The broad constellation of recent injuries is unusual and might point to something new going on in gymnastics training that is affecting young athletes in different ways,“ the study’s lead author, Dr. Jerry Dwek, an assistant clinical professor of radiology at the University of California, San Diego, said in a news release.
“These young athletes are putting an enormous amount of stress on their joints and possibly ruining them for the future.“
MRIs of the wrists and hands of 12 gymnasts with chronic wrist or hand pain revealed far more than the typical forearm injuries researchers expected.
“We were surprised to be looking at injuries every step down the hand, all the way from the radius to the small bones in the wrist and on to the ends of the finger bones at the knuckles,“ he said. “These types of injuries are likely to develop into early osteoarthritis.“
Dwek suggested that the additional study of how gymnastic stresses cause these injuries might help determine whether changes can be made to practice routines to better limit stress on the joints and growing bones.

Imagine a self-powering cell phone that never needs to be charged because it converts sound waves produced by the user into the energy it needs to keep running.
It’s not as far-fetched as it may seem thanks to the recent work of Tahir Cagin, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University.
Utilizing materials known in scientific circles as ’piezoelectrics,’ Cagin, whose research focuses on nanotechnology, has made a significant discovery in the area of power harvesting--a field that aims to develop self-powered devices that do not require replaceable power supplies such as batteries, ScienceDaily reported.
Specifically, Cagin and his partners from the University of Houston have found that a certain type of piezoelectric material can convert energy at a 100-percent increase when manufactured at a very small size--in this case, around 21 nanometers in thickness.
“What’s more, when materials are constructed bigger or smaller than this specific size, they show a significant decrease in their energy-converting capacity,“ he said.
His findings, which are detailed in an article published this fall in “Physical Review B,“ the scientific journal of the American Physical Society, could have potentially profound effects for low-powered electronic devices such as cellphones, laptops, personal communicators and a host of other computer-related devices used by everyone from the average consumer to law enforcement officers and even soldiers in the battlefield.

Iran’s Shahid Beheshti University will sign cooperation agreements with the two US universities of Harvard and Texas.
Medical Sciences Faculty of the university will sign agreements on cancer research.
Head of the Center for Liver and Digestion Research Mohammad Reza Zali told IRNA on Wednesday that the agreements are to be signed during a visit by M. D. Anderson, director general of US Academy of Sciences, and two instructors from Harvard and Texas universities to the Medical Sciences Faculty of the university.
Zali further said that exchange of instructor and students, and implementation of joint research projects are among other provisions of the agreements.
US instructors are currently in Tehran at the invitation of the university to undertake joint research projects.
Zali added that they were invited to the country to become acquainted with Iran’s scientific activities from close.

Women who breathed in secondhand smoke as children or young adults were later more likely to have trouble getting pregnant and suffer more miscarriages than women not exposed to smoke, US researchers reported.
They said toxins in the smoke could have permanently damaged the women’s bodies, causing later problems, and said their finding supports restrictions on smoking.
Luke Peppone at the University of Rochester in New York, Dr. Kenneth Piazza of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, and colleagues studied 4,800 women treated at Roswell Park, Reuters said.
They were asked to give details of all pregnancies, attempts to get pregnant, and miscarriages, as well as their history of smoking and breathing secondhand smoke.
Overall, 11 percent of the women reported difficulty becoming pregnant, and about a third lost one or more babies, the researchers wrote in the journal Tobacco Control.
“Forty percent reported any prenatal pregnancy difficulty (fetal loss and/or difficulty becoming pregnant),“ they said.
Women who remembered their parents smoking around them were 26 percent more likely to have had difficulty becoming pregnant and women exposed to any secondhand smoke were 39 percent more likely to have had a miscarriage, Peppone’s team reported.
Four out of five of the women reported exposure to secondhand smoke during their lifetimes and half grew up in a home with smoking parents.
“These statistics are breathtaking and certainly point to yet another danger of secondhand smoke exposure,“ Peppone said in a statement.