Traumatic ulnar artery aneurysm secondary to basketball dunk: a case report and review

Ulnar artery aneurysms are uncommon lesions. They are often caused by traumatic injury to the hand. Ulnar artery aneurysms have been reported in association with multiple sports-related activities, but never secondary to a basketball injury. The following is a case presentation of an ulnar artery aneurysm likely formed secondary to repetitive basketball slam dunking with accompanying review of diagnosis and surgical treatment of ulnar artery aneurysms.     

Magnetic resonance angiography of chest and abdomen at 3 T

During the past decade, contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (CE-MRA) has been proven to be a powerful tool to visualize the thoracoabdominal vasculature and, consequently, has become a widely accepted noninvasive imaging modality. With the more recent introduction of high-field whole-body magnetic resonance scanners, a further improvement of diagnostic accuracy can be expected. General considerations for performing high-resolution CE-MRA at higher field strength include the benefits of higher signal-to-noise ratio and an improved contrast between vascular and background tissues. Although there are many positive attributes for performing CE-MRA at 3 T, there are also some tradeoffs, such as static magnetic field inhomogeneity and increase in specific absorption rate. This review describes the main technical innovations of advanced CE-MRA techniques at 3 T, illustrated by characteristic cases.     

Brief Report: Aerodynamic integration produces a vehicle shape with a negative drag coefficient

Negative drag coefficients are normally associated with a vessel outfitted with a sail to extract energy from the wind and propel the vehicle forward. Therefore, the notion of a heavy vehicle, that is, a semi truck, that generates negative aerodynamic drag without a sail or any external appendages may seem implausible, especially given the fact that these vehicles have some of the largest drag coefficients on the road today. However, using both wind tunnel measurements and computational fluid dynamics simulations, we demonstrate aerodynamically integrated vehicle shapes that generate negative body-axis drag in a crosswind as a result of large negative frontal pressures that effectively “pull” the vehicle forward against the wind, much like a sailboat. While negative body-axis drag exists only for wind yaw angles above a certain analytical threshold, the negative frontal pressures exist at smaller yaw angles and subsequently produce body-axis drag coefficients that are significantly less than those of modern heavy vehicles. The application of this aerodynamic phenomenon to the heavy vehicle industry would produce sizable reductions in petroleum use throughout the United States.     

Having a Partner and Having Children: Comparisons of Adults with Congenital Heart Disease and the General Population: A 15-Year Case-Control Study

Objectives: To examine whether patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) are less likely to have a partner or children than individuals from the general population. Methods: Longitudinal study with two assessments of the same patients (n = 244) from a hospital population and controls (n = 238) from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) using parental education, patients age, and sex as matching criteria. The first patient study was conducted between 5/2003 and 6/2004, the second one between 5/2017 and 4/2019. Controls were drawn from GSOEP-surveys 2004 and 2018. CHD-severity was classified according to type of surgery: curative, reparative, or palliative. Living single was used as outcome measure, for offspring the outcome was having children or not. Results: Among women with CHD the rate of those living single was higher than among controls with the differences depending on disease complexity (curative: OR = 5.5; reparative: OR = 1.9; palliative: OR = 2.7). No statistically significant differences between patients and controls emerged in the male study population. With respect to children a marked difference emerged between women with CHD and controls. Among patients the odds of having children were lower than among controls (curative: OR = 0.3; reparative: OR = 0.3; palliative: OR = 0.2). The rate of patients with children with CHD (women: 5.6%; men: 4.9%) was higher than expected (1%) if compared with the general population. Conclusions: Using partnership and children as outcome criteria, patients with CHD are disadvantaged if compared to subjects from the general population. In female patients the social consequences of the disease turned out as more pervasive than in women.