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The Surgical Clinics of North America Aug 2010Understanding the complexities of the liver has been a long-standing challenge to physicians and anatomists. Significant strides in the understanding of hepatic anatomy... (Review)
Review
Understanding the complexities of the liver has been a long-standing challenge to physicians and anatomists. Significant strides in the understanding of hepatic anatomy have facilitated major progress in liver-directed therapies--surgical interventions, such as transplantation, hepatic resection, hepatic artery infusion pumps, and hepatic ablation, and interventional radiologic procedures, such as transarterial chemoembolization, selective internal radiation therapy, and portal vein embolization. Without understanding hepatic anatomy, such progressive interventions would not be feasible. This article reviews the history, general anatomy, and the classification schemes of liver anatomy and their relevance to liver-directed therapies.
Topics: Bile Ducts; Hepatectomy; Hepatic Artery; Hepatic Veins; Humans; Liver; Liver Diseases; Liver Transplantation
PubMed: 20637938
DOI: 10.1016/j.suc.2010.04.017 -
Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology Review Apr 2022The name Ivan Mahaim is well-known to electrophysiologists. However, alternative anatomical substrates can produce the abnormal rhythms initially interpreted on the... (Review)
Review
The name Ivan Mahaim is well-known to electrophysiologists. However, alternative anatomical substrates can produce the abnormal rhythms initially interpreted on the basis of the pathways he first described. These facts have prompted suggestions that Mahaim should be deprived of his eponym. It is agreed that specificity is required when describing the pathways that produce the disordered cardiac conduction, and that the identified pathways should now be described in an attitudinally appropriate fashion. The authors remain to be convinced that understanding will be enhanced simply by discarding the term 'Mahaim physiology' from the lexicon. It is fascinating to look back at the history of accessory atrioventricular junctional conduction pathways outside the normal accessory atrioventricular conduction system, and their possible role in rhythm disturbances. It took both the anatomist and the clinical arrhythmologist quite some time to understand the complex anatomical architecture and the ensuing electrophysiological properties. Over the years, the name Mahaim was often mentioned in those discussions, although these pathways were not the ones that produced the eponym. The reason for this review, therefore, is to present relevant information about the person and what followed thereafter.
PubMed: 35990105
DOI: 10.15420/aer.2022.12 -
Current Biology : CB May 2023In the early 19th century, long before the discovery of the dinosaurs, scientists and the public alike were faced with the realization that strange beasts, wholly...
In the early 19th century, long before the discovery of the dinosaurs, scientists and the public alike were faced with the realization that strange beasts, wholly extinct, were once populating Earth's ancient oceans. In no small part, this realization was through the discovery of the first plesiosaurs (and ichthyosaurs) along the Dorset coast of England in the seaside town of Lyme Regis. There was this large marine reptile resembling a large sea turtle, but with four evenly shaped flippers and looking as though a large snake had been pulled through its carapace. It was soon to be named scientifically Plesiosaurus, in reference to its greater similarity to living reptiles than the Ichthyosaurus (Figure 1). While the Ichthyosaurus was relatively easily understood as a fish-shaped reptile descended from land-living ancestors, the Plesiosaurus was beyond comprehension, even though incomplete skeletons had been unearthed already in the early 18th century. Plesiosaurs seemed so alien that the first complete skeleton, discovered by the famed Mary Anning a little more than 200 years ago (Figure 1A), was considered a fake by the leading anatomist of the day, the Baron Georges Cuvier in Paris. Only study of the original specimen convinced him of the authenticity of this animal but reinforced his seminal insight that there is extinction.
Topics: Animals; Male; Animal Shells; Dinosaurs; England; Environment
PubMed: 37220726
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.04.018 -
Medicine (Abingdon, England : UK Ed.) Aug 2020Clinical examination allows the neurologist to test hypotheses generated by their interpretation of the patient's story. By eliciting abnormal clinical signs, the... (Review)
Review
Clinical examination allows the neurologist to test hypotheses generated by their interpretation of the patient's story. By eliciting abnormal clinical signs, the examining doctor works out a differential diagnosis for the part of the nervous system affected and, using information from the clinical history, a differential diagnosis of the pathology. Clinical examination also allows the clinician to observe and quantify function, hear more story and provide reassurance. The focus of the examination should be dictated by the hypothesis being tested, the patient's clinical state and the situation. Examination of the different parts of the nervous system remains very important in all clinical situations as the best available index of function of the nervous system as a whole.
PubMed: 32834734
DOI: 10.1016/j.mpmed.2020.05.006 -
Fungal Biology and Biotechnology 2019Science and art have long been studied interchangeably, with notable polymaths emerging in the Renaissance such as Leonardo da Vinci (artist, inventor, engineer and...
Science and art have long been studied interchangeably, with notable polymaths emerging in the Renaissance such as Leonardo da Vinci (artist, inventor, engineer and anatomist) and Alexander von Humboldt (explorer, geographer and naturalist) with his fellow investigators Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (scientist and writer) and Friedrich Schiller (philosopher, physician and historian). However, this polymathic attitude and the co-operation between scientists and artists seemed to go into hibernation in the second half of the eighteenth century due to an overload of information, especially for the scientists. I illustrate here that the two seemingly diverse fields can feed and sustain each other not only from the attitude of how to think about an object, but also how to show this object in a way that may not have been seen before. Ideas and viewpoints gained from looking at an organism artistically can enable a scientist to think "outside the box", providing insights to reassess earlier scientifically hidebound attitudes.
PubMed: 31057802
DOI: 10.1186/s40694-019-0068-7