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Introduction Brain cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in children and the majority of childhood brain tumors are diagnosed without determination of their underlying etiology. Little is known about risk factors for childhood brain tumors in Vietnam. The objective of this case-control study was to identify maternal and perinatal factors associated with brain tumors occurring in young Vietnamese children and adolescents.Methods We conducted a hospital-based case-control study at Viet Duc University Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. Cases consisted of children with brain tumors aged 0-14 years old admitted to the hospital from January 2020 to July 2022 while the controls were age and sex-matched hospitalized children diagnosed with head trauma. Perinatal characteristics were abstracted from hospital medical records and maternal medical, behavioral, and sociodemographic factors were collected through in-person interviews. Conditional logistic regression models were used to examine maternal and perinatal factors associated with childhood brain tumors.Results The study sample included 220 children (110 cases and 110 controls) whose average age was 8.9 years and 41.8% were girls. Children born to mothers aged greater than 30 years at the time of the child’s birth had a higher risk of childhood brain tumors compared to those born to mothers aged from 18 to 30 years old (OR = 2.55; 95% CI: 1.13-5.75). Additionally low maternal body mass index prior to the current pregnancy of <18.5 kg/m2significantly increased the odds of having a child with a brain tumor in relation to normal maternal body mass index from 18.5-22.9 kg/m2(OR = 3.19; 95% CI: 1.36 - 7.50).Conclusion Advanced maternal age and being markedly underweight were associated with an increased odds of having a child with a brain tumor. A population-based study with larger sample size is needed to confirm and extend the present findings.

Objective: To demonstrate the efficacy of minimally invasive surgery via a vertical infra-axillary incision for complete tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) correction.Methods: In a study conducted from April to October 2023, 33 patients with TOF underwent total repair using this approach. On average, the patient age was 5.94 ± 2.68 months, weight was 6.49 ± 0.97 kg, and mean z-score index for the pulmonary valve annulus was –1.38 ± 0.92. Results also highlighted abnormal coronary artery pathways in 18.2% of cases, including 1 patient with dextrocardia and situs inversus.Results: The average incision length was 4.01 ± 0.6 cm, with bypass and clamping times of 95.42 ± 33.19 min and 69.24 ± 28.15 min, respectively. Preservation of the pulmonary valve annulus was achieved in 67% of patients. No postoperative deaths occurred, and there were no significant ventilation differences between groups. After surgery, no severe pulmonary valve regurgitation was observed, with patients remaining in excellent condition throughout the 7-month follow-up. The pulmonary valve pressure gradient after the procedure was 23.97 ± 10.65 mm Hg, and no heart failure cases were reported per the Ross classification at the latest follow-up.Conclusions: The vertical infra-axillary incision approach for total TOF repair is safe, effective, and cosmetically advantageous.

Severe tetanus is characterized by muscle spasm and cardiovascular system disturbance. The pathophysiology of muscle spasm is relatively well understood and involves inhibition of central inhibitory synapses by tetanus toxin. That of cardiovascular disturbance is less clear, but is believed to relate to disinhibition of the autonomic nervous system. The clinical syndrome of autonomic nervous system dysfunction (ANSD) seen in severe tetanus is characterized principally by changes in heart rate and blood pressure which have been linked to increased circulating catecholamines. Previous studies have described varying relationships between catecholamines and signs of ANSD in tetanus, but are limited by confounders and assays used. In this study, we aimed to perform detailed characterization of the relationship between catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline), cardiovascular parameters (heart rate and blood pressure) and clinical outcomes (ANSD, mechanical ventilation required, and length of intensive care unit stay) in adults with tetanus, as well as examine whether intrathecal antitoxin administration affected subsequent catecholamine excretion. Noradrenaline and adrenaline were measured by ELISA from 24-h urine collections taken on day 5 of hospitalization in 272 patients enrolled in a 2 × 2 factorial-blinded randomized controlled trial in a Vietnamese hospital. Catecholamine results measured from 263 patients were available for analysis. After adjustment for potential confounders (i.e., age, sex, intervention treatment, and medications), there were indications of non-linear relationships between urinary catecholamines and heart rate. Adrenaline and noradrenaline were associated with subsequent development of ANSD, and length of ICU stay.

This paper estimates the provincial data of carbon dioxide emissions in 60 provinces in Vietnam for the years 2000 to 2010, and investigates the simultaneous relationships between output, environmental pollution and health in Vietnam. By applying the two-step system-dynamic GMM, lagged effects, endogeneity, heteroscedasticity, and autocorrelation for the variables have been addressed. The results show that increase in output causes an increase in the emissions. Meanwhile, an increase in emissions causes bad population health in the Mekong River Delta region, one of the highest tuberculosis incidence regions in Vietnam. The results also demonstrate that population health is an important input into economic growth in Vietnam. Better population health leads to increased output. Findings have policy implications for health, pollution and investment related issues for Vietnam.

and importance: Vertebral-artery associated hemifacial spasm is rare. Microvascular decompression (MVD) of hemifacial spasm (HFS) associated with the vertebral artery (VA) shows high rates of incomplete cure and complications compared to non-VA-related HFS.

In recent years, many protocols have been developed to support user mobility in wireless networks, e.g. Mobile IP suite of protocols designed to support IP routing to mobile nodes. However, support for truly seamless mobility requires more than just routing: every service associated with the mobile user needs to be transferred smoothly to the new access network. In this paper, we will concentrate on the problem of transferring service state (context) at both the link and the IP layers. We propose a method to estimate the best moment in time for transferring context information associated with the mobile user. As one of key issues in the proactive context transfer scheme is accuracy of handover prediction, we suggest and describe a new concept of Forced Handover that can provide very low handover latency. The simulation results and the following discussions show that our scheme is helpful in ensuring seamless mobility, while keeping the number of unnecessary handovers resulting from the proactive nature of the scheme at a controllable level.

Abstract: In this paper we study the behavior of a solution of the linear complementarity problem when data are perturbed. We give characterizations of strong stability of the linear complementarity problem at a solution. In the case of stability we give sufficient and necessary conditions.