Reconstructive surgery in the facial and oral sites requires high levels of precision. Intraoperative guidance can enhance surgical precision with three-dimensional (3D) image model. Here, case report was our endeavor of creating a 3D digital image model to guide plastic procedure is performed on the soft tissue of a patient's cheek. 3D facial structure was taken preoperatively by scanning the contours of the patient's head. The defect on patient's left cheek due to an aneurysm was identified and virtually corrected by mirroring image from the healthy right side of the cheek. Once the 3D virtual model was created, we displayed the 3D model onto the surgical site during the operation to guide surgical procedure. Digital technology is developing rapidly and is unavoidable to merge with surgical care. Clinical judgment and intraoperative performance will be improved by our efforts of integrating digital technology into the operating room.

Schwannoma, also called neurilemmoma, is a benign peripheral nerve sheath tumor. Most common locations are flexor surfaces of the extremities, neck, mediastinum, retroperitoneum, posterior spinal roots, and cerebellopontine angle. Pleural schwannomas are extremely rare neoplasms of the thoracic cavity. To the best of our knowledge, till date, <20 cases have been reported. Herein, we report a case of primary benign pleural schwannoma in an elderly 60-year-old female in whom the pleural mass was discovered incidentally on computed tomography chest. The patient was subjected to left posterolateral thoracotomy; pleural mass was resected which showed histopathological and immunohistochemical features of schwannoma.

Background and Objectives: Owing to the scarcity of health-care financing and the pressure of aging with the associated increased incidence of chronic heart failure, new models of health-care delivery supported by technology solution require a social economic analysis. We aim to assess improvement of Kansas City Living with Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ) score with telehome monitoring in elderly patients affected with Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) and to estimate a probable cost saving for health-care provider and patient, by calculating a probability to reduce fatal events such as mortality and hospitalization associated with improved health status measured with the KCCQ questionnaire. Materials and Methods: An observational quasi-experimental trial was used. Eight patients affected with chronic heart failure aged 85-90 years of age who have been at least three times hospitalized within the last year were recruited for the study. These patients received an educational module to empower their self-management capacity and a medicine kit necessary for telehome monitoring. The KCCQ questionnaire was employed. The KCCQ questionnaire is an independent predictor of health-care resource utilization. The KCCQ score improvement is associated likely with rehospitalization and mortality reduction according to results from previous clinical trial, where KCCQ score has been demonstrated as a strong statistically independent predictor of mortality and rehospitalization after adjustment for other variables. Results: The KCCQ score improved for 15 points from baseline measurement, after 6 months of telehome monitoring. The improvement of KCCQ score of 15 points represents a reduction of probability of hospitalization and mortality for 18% and 16%, respectively. In addition, an individual's cost savings were calculated, using the individual's willingness to pay to avoid fatal event, individual's productivity gain by avoiding a travel to remote hospital facilities, and an improved probability of positive event with telehome monitoring. Conclusion: Analysis demonstrated a probability for an important economical saving with the use of telehome monitoring for the provider and patient. We can conclude that telehome monitoring represents an innovative service that provides clinical and economical value addition to the patient, health-care system, and society.

Background and Objectives: Realistically and efficiently simulating dynamic behavior of human organs under interactions is crucial for the immersive user experience of the surgical simulator. Conventional methods are time-consuming to simulate this phenomenon due to topological modifications. Materials and Methods: This paper proposes a robust and efficient point-based framework for surgical simulation, allowing realistically simulating mechanical response of human organs under interactions with visual and tactile feedback. Considering the inevitable topological modifications occurred in surgical simulation, we adopt sparse point cloud to model the mechanics of deformable bodies while employ surface mesh to represent morphological details of human organ, which can not only disconnect mechanical complexity from geometrical details, but also enable precise boundary conditions to be solved with surface mesh. Results: We validate our method on a variety of challenging surgical scenarios, and the results demonstrate that our method can realistically and efficiently provide the visuo-haptic feedback for surgical simulation. Conclusions: Our method can well tackle the inefficiency limitation of mesh-based methods related to topological modifications issue, and has great potential to be adopted in practical surgical simulators.

Wearable technologies designed to deliver benefits to health and well-being through the use of digital applications are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. This article focuses on the use of wearable technologies which track user lifestyle behaviors and seek to provide tools for better personal health management. It provides an evidence of general positive health outcomes from previous research and provides a detailed analysis of the functionalities and strategic approaches of three different wearable devices which have been used continuously and simultaneously by the lead author for over 18 months. Based on the experience of long-term use of these devices, the article draws some conclusions about their usage and future development strategies.

[INLINE:1] Uwe Spetzger, MD, is the Chairman of Department of Neurosurgery, Klinikum Karlsruhe, and Institute for Anthropomatics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany. Uwe Spetzger received his medical degree in 1989 at the Medical Faculty, University of Heidelberg, Germany. He passed the US American medical exam (ECFMG) in 1990. He has started his neurosurgical training in 1990 at the Department of Neurosurgery, Technical University (RWTH) Aachen and got his board certification of neurosurgeon in 1996. The Grant of the Wilhelm-Tonnis-Foundation of the German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC) enables his scientific internship in 1999 at Department of Neurosurgery, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). In June 1999, he passed the European Examination in Neurosurgery (EANS). From 1999 - 2002 he was vice-chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Freiburg and the director of the interdisciplinary centre for skull base surgery at Freiburg University. Since 2002 he is Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery, Klinikum Karlsruhe and in 2003 he became an active member of the Faculty of Computer Science, Humanoids and Intelligence Systems Lab - Institute for Anthropomatics at KIT. Prof. Spetzger became the president of the international Society of Medical Innovation and Technology iSMIT in 2013 and the congress president of the 66th Annual Meeting of German Society of Neurosurgery DGNC in 2015 and the Vice-President of the International Society of Digital Medicine in 2016. He is member of several national and international neurosurgical and medical technological societies. His main surgical and research interests are cerebrovascular surgery, skull base surgery, computer-assisted and robotic surgery, neuronavigation and spinal microsurgery.