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Background: The management of ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) injuries widely varies among surgeons. Although various treatment options have been proposed including surgical and conservative treatments, no golden standard treatment strategy has been established of yet. The American survey reported an overall experienced and well-trained cohort of surgeons often reached consensus opinions on how to approach UCL injury. However, the consensus among Japanese surgeons on the treatment of UCL injuries remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to survey current trends among Japanese orthopaedic surgeons in the treatment of UCL injuries in baseball players., Methods: An online survey was distributed to the active members of the Japanese doctor's network for baseball injury prevention, which was formed by partial members of the medical committee in the Japan Baseball Council. The survey was composed of three sections: demographics of the surveyees, preferred operative and nonoperative management of UCL injuries, and five fictional clinical case scenarios of baseball players with a UCL injury., Results: The 131 e-mailed invitations to society members yielded 78 completed online surveys with a participation rate of 60%. Sixty-four respondents (82%) reported >15 years of clinical experience. Sixty-five respondents (83%) performed ≤5 UCL reconstructions per year. As nonsurgical management of UCL injuries, seventy-four surgeons (95%) preferred physiotherapy followed by intraarticular injection (46%). For surgical management, seventy-three surgeons (93%) preferred UCL reconstruction. Of the five case scenarios, a consensus was reached in three cases: to perform surgery on the patient with full-thickness UCL tear. When operative management was the preferred option, a consensus was reached to perform UCL reconstruction., Conclusion: Japanese doctors involved in the treatment of baseball injuries reached a consensus to indicate high-level athletes with a full-thickness UCL tear for surgery. When operative management was the preferred option, a consensus was reached to perform UCL reconstruction. These results may contribute to the decision-making for managing UCL injuries., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 The Japanese Orthopaedic Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: To determine the effect of an extra hydrophobic resin layer (EHL) on the bond strength and durability of three different pH one-step universal adhesives (UAs) utilized in self-etch (SE) mode, and to explore whether UAs can be used as a primer in two-step bonding system., Methods: Three different pH UAs were utilized: G-Premio Bond (GPB), Scotchbond Universal (SBU), All-Bond Universal (ABU), while the bonding agent of Clearfil SE Bond 2 (SE2) was selected as the EHL. For the EHL groups, EHL was applied after the air blow of each UA and before light curing. The microtensile bond strength (μTBS), fracture modes, interfacial structures and nanoleakage (NL) were evaluated after 24 h water storage and after 15,000 thermal cycling (TC). Elastic modulus (EM) and hardness (H) was tested by a nanoindenter after 24 h., Results: Significantly higher μTBS was achieved in the GPB+EHL group compared with GPB both at 24 h and after 15,000 TC, while the additional use of EHL did not improve the μTBS of SBU and ABU significantly both at 24 h and after 15,000 TC. GPB+EHL demonstrated lower NL than GPB. The mean EM and H of the adhesive layer in GPB+EHL was significantly decreased compared with GPB., Conclusions: The results indicated that the bond strength and durability of low pH one-step UA (GPB) were significantly improved by additional application of EHL both at 24 h and after 15,000 TC, while no significant improvement was observed for ultra-mild one-step UAs (SBU and ABU)., Clinical Significance: This study indicates that GPB can be used as a primer in a two-step bonding system, while SBU and ABU may not be as effective. These findings may help guide clinicians in selecting the appropriate UAs and bonding techniques for different clinical scenarios., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: There is no consensus regarding the range of immobilization in the conservative treatment of distal radius fractures (DRFs). Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to compare the clinical outcome of patients with DRFs treated conservatively with below- or above-elbow immobilization., Materials and Methods: Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines, two independent reviewers searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Clinicaltrials.gov and World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform in April 2020; a subsequent update search was conducted in April 2021. We identified all randomised controlled trials comparing two immobilization methods in DRFs. The primary outcome measures were the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (DASH) or QuickDASH questionnaire scores in the short- and long-term (≤ and >six weeks, respectively) follow-up as well as the treatment failure rate. The secondary outcome measures were radiographic outcome, patient-rated wrist evaluation (PRWE) score, pain score and adverse events. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool version 2. We used the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach to evaluate the quality of evidence., Results: The initial search revealed 1,775 records, and ten studies with 909 participants in total were included. There was no significant difference in DASH score in the short-term follow-up (4.99 lower, 95% confidence interval (CI): 10.45 lower to 0.46 higher; very low certainty) and treatment failure (risk ratio: 0.91, 95% CI: 0.59 to 1.40; low certainty). A clinically irrelevant but significant mean difference (0.83 lower, 95%CI: 1.64 lower to 0.03 lower; low certainty) was found in the DASH score in favour of below-elbow immobilization in the long-term follow-up. The overall risk of bias in DASH scores was high based on the measurement bias. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in secondary outcome measures., Conclusion: This meta-analysis did not demonstrate clinically meaningful difference between below- and above-elbow immobilization in terms of DASH score both in the short- and long-term follow-ups. However, overall certainty of evidence was considered very low, based on the very serious risk of bias, inconsistency and imprecision. Hence, there is a need for further higher quality research., Trial Registration Number: UMIN000040134 (4/14/2020)., Competing Interests: Declarations of Competing Interest None., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Microtensile bond strength (μTBS) test was introduced in 1994. Since then, it has been utilized profoundly across many bond strength testing laboratories, making it currently one of the most standard and versatile bond strength test. Although it is a static and strength-based method, together with the morphological and spectroscopic investigations, it has been contributing immensely in the advancement of dentin adhesive systems. μTBS test has a greater discriminative capability than the traditional macro-shear bond test. During the early stage of its development, the authors predicted that this testing method would enable evaluation of the adhesive performances of resins to excavated carious or sclerotic dentin and the regional bond strengths of various portions of the cavity. In addition, they also stated the possibility of comparing the long-term stability of resin adhesion at various portions of the cavity walls on teeth extracted at various times after insertion of bonded restorations. In this review, we discussed the historical background, inception and the application of the μTBS test and proposed directions for further improvement of this testing method., (© 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Japanese Association for Dental Science This is an.)

Background: Asians generally have smaller stature than Europeans and Americans, and currently available implants used in reverse shoulder arthroplasty might not fit smaller bony anatomies. However, few articles have reported glenoid geometry in the Asian population. The purpose of this study was to measure the dimensions and orientations of the glenoid from three-dimensional computed tomography reconstructions of elderly Japanese subjects., Methods: This study included 100 shoulders (50 males and 50 females with >50 years of age). The mean age was 67 ± 7 years for both sexes, and the mean height was 167 ± 7 cm for males and 154 ± 6 cm for females. Three-dimensional scapular models were created from computed tomographic images, and the glenoid height, glenoid width, glenoid version, glenoid inclination, vault depth, and vault width were measured., Results: The mean glenoid height and width were 38.6 and 29.4 mm for males and 33.1 and 24.4 mm for females, respectively. Both retroversion and superior inclination were approximately 3° in both sexes. The glenoid vault was deeper in the posterior region with the maximum depth of 26.1 and 23.6 mm in males and females. The vault width was narrower in the anterior region with the anterior width of 2.5 mm at 15 mm medial from the glenoid face in females., Conclusion: Glenoids of Japanese females are small compared to currently available baseplates for reverse shoulder arthroplasty. These results may be helpful to aid design in smaller baseplates that better fit the anatomic geometry of the Asian glenoid., (Copyright © 2018 The Japanese Orthopaedic Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Fatty degeneration of the cuff muscles is usually evaluated at the Y-view in oblique sagittal images. It was recently proposed that muscle shift after repair may influence the fatty degeneration values, and the evaluation of the muscles at a more medial site was recommended. However, the differences in muscle quality in accord with measurement sites have been unclear. Here we evaluated differences in fatty degeneration of the rotator cuff muscles measured quantitatively at different sites, using T2 mapping., Methods: We assessed 702 shoulders of 675 patients (335 males, 340 females; mean age, 62 years) who underwent MRI including T2 mapping. There were 345 shoulders without rotator cuff tears and 357 shoulders with tears: partial tear = 103 shoulders; small = 63; medium = 94; large = 71; massive = 26. T2 values of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles were measured on the Y-view and on the image that was 15 mm medial to the Y-view., Results: The T2 values at the medial site increased with the tear extent, as did those on the Y-view. There were no significant differences in supraspinatus T2 values between those on the Y-view and at the medial site in all tear size groups except medium and large tears (p = 0.008 and p < 0.001, respectively). There were also no significant differences in infraspinatus T2 values between the two sites in all tear size groups except large tears (p = 0.002). However, the differences were relatively small (2.4-5.6 ms), which were within the standard deviations of the measurements., Conclusions: The T2 values of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles on the Y-view and at 15 mm medial to it were almost identical, with the exception of small differences in the case of larger tears., (Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Nucleic acid (NA)-targeted tests detect and quantify viral DNA and RNA (collectively xNA) to support epidemiological surveillance and, in individual patients, to guide therapy. They commonly use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and reverse transcription PCR. Although these all have rapid turnaround, they are expensive to run. Multiplexing would allow their cost to be spread over multiple targets, but often only with lower sensitivity and accuracy, noise, false positives, and false negatives; these arise by interactions between the multiple nucleic acid primers and probes in a multiplexed kit. Here we offer a multiplexed assay for a panel of respiratory viruses that mitigates these problems by combining several nucleic acid analogs from the emerging field of synthetic biology: (i) self-avoiding molecular recognition systems (SAMRSs), which facilitate multiplexing, and (ii) artificially expanded genetic information systems (AEGISs), which enable low-noise PCR. These are supplemented by "transliteration" technology, which converts standard nucleotides in a target to AEGIS nucleotides in a product, improving hybridization. The combination supports a multiplexed Luminex-based respiratory panel that potentially differentiates influenza viruses A and B, respiratory syncytial virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, detecting as few as 10 MERS virions in a 20-μl sample., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)