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Background: During the last decade, arthroscopic procedures have been replacing open techniques in Haglund disease treatment because of their considerable advantages. Endoscopic calcaneoplasty is a technique that allows resection of posterosuperior calcaneal exostosis and retrocalcaneal bursitis. The objective of this article was to describe this technique and report its clinical and subjective outcome., Methods: A retrospective study was performed of consecutive patients undergoing endoscopic Haglund resection surgery between July 2014 and March 2020 at a single academic institution. All patients were surveyed in person about the level of pain (visual analog scale), its location (central, lateral, medial or diffuse), its relation with rest, or physical activity. Clinical evaluation was assessed using the hindfoot scale designed by the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society (AOFAS)., Results: In this study, 14 endoscopic calcaneoplasties were performed in 14 patients, with an average follow-up of 40 months. The visual analog scale score improved from a preoperative average value of 9.07 to 1.8 after surgery ( P  > .0001). The AOFAS scale rose from 38.7 before surgery to 94.6 postoperative ( P  > .0001). Good subjective results were observed in 12 patients (85.7%), and all of them would have surgery again. There were no wound complications or infections. No patient required reoperation., Conclusion: In this relatively small cohort, we found that endoscopic calcaneoplasty was associated with good clinical and subjective results with few complications., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Disclosure forms for all authors are available online.

The global population is projected to increase, indicating that there will be greater demand for animal protein to meet the associated food needs. This demand will place additional pressure on livestock systems to increase output while also minimizing natural resource inputs. Insect protein has emerged as a potential alternative to conventional protein feeds, such as soybean meal. Mealworm larvae (MWL; Tenebrio molitor ) have been studied in poultry and swine as an alternative protein source; however, there is no research currently evaluating MWL for cattle. Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL; Hermetia illucens ) have also received attention for their potential use in livestock feed due to their scalability and nutritional value, but research in cattle is limited. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of whole-dried MWL and defatted BSFL as protein supplements for cattle consuming forage. Five ruminally cannulated steers were utilized in a 5 × 5 Latin square experiment to determine how MWL and BSFL supplementations affect forage utilization. Steers consuming ad libitum low-quality forage (76.5% neutral detergent fiber [NDF], 4.2% crude protein) were provided one of the five treatments each period: 1) control with no supplement (CON), 2) soybean meal (CONV), 3) BSFL, 4) MWL, or 5) 50/50 by-weight blend of BSFL and MWL (MIX). All treatments were provided at 100 mg N/kg BW and periods included 8 d for treatment adaptation, 5 d for intake and digestion, and 1 d for ruminal fermentation measures. Protein supplementation stimulated forage organic matter intake (FOMI; P  ≤ 0.01) relative to CON (3.28 kg/d). There was a significant difference in FOMI ( P  ≤ 0.01) between BSFL (4.30 kg/d) and CONV (4.71 kg/d), but not between CONV and MWL ( P  = 0.06, 4.43 kg/d). Total digestible OM intake (TDOMI) was also stimulated by the provision of protein ( P  ≤ 0.01), from 1.94 kg/d for CON to an average of 3.24 kg/d across protein supplements. Organic matter digestibility (OMD) and NDF digestibility (NDFD) were not affected by treatment ( P  ≥ 0.37), for an average OMD of 66.5% and NDFD of 62.7%. There was also no treatment effect on ruminal volatile fatty acid ( P  = 0.96) or ammonia-N ( P  = 0.22) concentrations. These data indicate that MWL may stimulate forage utilization by beef cattle to a greater extent than BSFL, but both are viable protein supplements., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society of Animal Science.)

Despite the increase of literature on seabird plastic ingestion in recent years, few studies have assessed how plastic loads vary according to different sampling methods. Most studies use necropsies of seabirds with a natural cause of death, e.g. beached or predated, to determine plastic loads and monitor marine debris. Sampling naturally dead seabirds may be biased as they have perished because of their intrinsic factors, e.g. poor body condition, high parasite loads, sickness or predation, affecting estimates of plastic loads. However, seabirds killed accidentally may be more representative of the population. Here, we used the short-tailed shearwater Ardenna tenuirostris to test different sampling methods: naturally beached fledglings and accidentally road-killed fledglings after being attracted and grounded by artificial lights. We compared plastic load, body condition, and feeding strategies (through using feathers' δ 13 C and δ 15 N isotope niche) between beached and road-killed fledglings. Beached birds showed higher plastic loads, poorer body condition and reduced isotopic variability, suggesting that this group is not a representative subsample of the whole cohort of the fledgling population. Our results might have implications for long-term monitoring programs of seabird plastic ingestion. Monitoring plastic debris through beached birds could overestimate plastic ingestion by the entire population. We encourage the establishment of refined monitoring programs using fledglings grounded by light pollution if available. These samples focus on known cohorts from the same population. The fledgling plastic loads are transferred from parents during parental feeding, accumulating during the chick-rearing period. Thus, these fledglings provide a higher and valuable temporal resolution, which is more useful and informative than unknown life history of beached birds., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To compare the incidence of catheter colonization and catheter-related bloodstream infections between heparin-coated catheters and those coated with a synergistic combination of chlorhexidine and silver sulfadiazine., Design: Randomized, controlled clinical trial., Setting: A 20-bed medical-surgical intensive care unit., Patients: A total of 180 patients requiring the insertion of a trilumen central venous catheter. INTERVENTIONS. Patients were randomized to receive either a trilumen heparin or chlorhexidine and silver sulfadiazine-coated catheter., Measurements: Catheter colonization was defined by a semiquantitative catheter tip culture yielding 15 or more colony-forming units or quantitative culture of 1,000 or more colony-forming units/ml. Catheter-related bloodstream infection as the isolation of the same microorganism from a peripheral blood culture and catheter tip., Results: A total of 260 catheters were cultured. Out of 132 heparin-coated catheters, 29 were colonized and out of 128 chlorhexidine and silver sulfadiazine-coated catheters, 13 were colonized ( p=0.03), relative risk RR=2.16 (1.18-3.97). This represents an incidence of 23.5 and 11.5 episodes of catheter colonization per 1,000 catheter-days, respectively ( p=0.0059), RR=2.04 (1.05-3.84). Microorganisms isolated in catheter colonization from heparin-coated catheters were gram-positive cocci 23, gram-negative bacilli 7, and Candida spp 4. In chlorhexidine and silver sulfadiazine-coated catheters were gram-positive cocci 6 and gram-negative bacilli 11 ( p=0.009). The incidence of catheter-related bloodstream infections per 1,000 catheter-days was 3.24 in heparin-coated catheters and 2.6 in chlorhexidine and silver sulfadiazine-coated catheters ( p=0.79), RR=1.22 (0.27-5.43)., Conclusions: In critically ill patients the use of trilumen central venous catheters coated with chlorhexidine and silver sulfadiazine reduced the risk of catheter colonization due to prevention of gram-positive cocci and Candida spp.