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Purpose: 177Lu-DOTATATE therapy is an effective treatment strategy for the treatment of neuroendocrine tumours. However, it could cause severe side effects in major critical organs. Therefore, individual dosimetry is essential for the safety and treatment of patients. Multiple imaging time points (4–6 time points) post administration of radioactivity can be used to obtain the best fit for dosimetric calculations, however, this is a tedious and time-consuming process. In this study, we aimed to reduce the number of imaging time points to three and optimized them for less cumbersome organ dosimetry. Methods: In this retrospective study, the images from 40 patients with neuroendocrine tumors were analysed. Sequential planar whole-body scans were acquired at five time points (0.5, 4, 24, 72/96 and 160 h) post administration of 177Lu-DOTATATE, which was considered the standard data set for dosimetry. Subsequently, seven subsets of three different time points (T1-0.5,4,24 h; T2-4,24,72/96 h; T3-0.5,4,160 h; T4-4,24,160 h; T5- 24,72/96,160 h; T6- 4,72/96,160 h; T7-0.5,4,72/96 h) were generated using standard data set. For each of these, normalized cumulative activity (NCA) and absorbed dose (AD) for kidneys, liver, spleen, lung, and tumours were estimated using Dosimetry Toolkit (GE Healthcare, Chicago, IL) and OLINDA EXM v.2 software respectively. Results: The best three correlation coefficients of AD (mGy/MBq) of the standard data set with subsets were 0.74 (T2), 0.71(T6), 0.94 (T7) respectively for kidneys; 0.80(T3), 0.64(T6), 0.77(T7) respectively for spleen; 0.99(T3), 0.98(T6), 0.99(T7) respectively for liver; 0.63(T3), 0.62(T4), 0.75(T7) for lung and 0.92(T3), 0.90(T6), 0.96(T7) for tumours respectively. Conclusion: It was demonstrated that organ dosimetry with three-time point imaging can be as accurate as standard imaging when the imaging three time points are chosen optimally. The imaging subset of T7 (0.5, 4 and 72/96 h) produced the best results for organs and tumour lesions compared to other subsets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Idarucizumab reverses the anticoagulant effect of dabigatran, but few comparative studies have reported on clinical outcomes with idarucizumab. Objective: Our objective was to determine the effect of idarucizumab on clinical outcomes. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study in a nationally representative sample of hospitals in the United States. The study population included adults ≥ 18 years who were hospitalized for dabigatran-associated major bleeding between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2017. We compared idarucizumab-exposed patients to the unexposed group. Our primary outcome of interest was in-hospital mortality. Results: We included 266 exposed and 1345 non-exposed participants across 271 hospitals. Among participants with gastrointestinal bleeding, there was no statistically significant difference in the odds of in-hospital mortality [9/153 (5.9%) vs 37/1124 (3.3%); adjusted odds ratio = 1.39, 95% confidence interval 0.51–3.45] between the idarucizumab-exposed and non-exposed groups. Among participants with intracranial bleeding, there was an excess of in-hospital mortality [13/112 (11.6%) vs 6/217 (2.8%)] associated with idarucizumab exposure, but limitations include sparse data and the inability to rule out residual confounding or confounding by disease severity. Conclusions: Among a large nationally representative sample of adult patients with dabigatran-associated major bleeding in the United States, we found no difference in in-hospital mortality among patients with gastrointestinal bleeding associated with idarucizumab exposure. An excess risk of in-hospital mortality associated with idarucizumab exposure among participants with intracranial bleeding deserves further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanostructured hollow carbon spheres (HCNSs), with either carbon nanotube (CNT) or metal oxide nanowire (MONW) decoration on their surface, were synthesized as building materials with a great potential for the next-generation advanced applications. A well-established, polymeric latex NS synthesis method and a simply modified version of a microwave (MW) energy-based carbonization approach, i.e., Poptube, were systematically combined to obtain these HCNSs. Through this simple, facile, affordable and easily scalable “combined synthesis method,” it was managed to successfully produce HCNSs with unique morphological, spectroscopic, thermal and elemental features, all of which were strongly supported by both various material characterization test results and the relevant previous literature data. Thus, it is believed that the as-synthesized CNT or MONW decorated HCNSs (CNT-MONW/HCNS) from the above-mentioned method would soon become the materials of preference for the next-generation advanced applications in various science and engineering fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]