Background: After nonelective (i.e., semiurgent, urgent and emergent) surgeries, patients discharged from hospitals are at risk of readmissions, emergency department visits or death. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we are undertaking the Post Discharge after Surgery Virtual Care with Remote Automated Monitoring Technology (PVC-RAM) trial to determine if virtual care with remote automated monitoring (RAM) compared with standard care will increase the number of days adult patients remain alive at home after being discharged following nonelective surgery. Methods: We are conducting a randomized controlled trial in which 900 adults who are being discharged after nonelective surgery from 8 Canadian hospitals are randomly assigned to receive virtual care with RAM or standard care. Outcome adjudicators are masked to group allocations. Patients in the experimental group learn how to use the study’s tablet computer and RAM technology, which will measure their vital signs. For 30 days, patients take daily biophysical measurements and complete a recovery survey. Patients interact with nurses via the cellular modem–enabled tablet, who escalate care to preassigned and available physicians if RAM measurements exceed predetermined thresholds, patients report symptoms, a medication error is identified or the nurses have concerns they cannot resolve. The primary outcome is number of days alive at home during the 30 days after randomization. Interpretation: This trial will inform management of patients after discharge following surgery in the COVID-19 pandemic and offer insights for management of patients who undergo nonelective surgery in a nonpandemic setting. Knowledge dissemination will be supported through an online multimedia resource centre, policy briefs, presentations, peer-reviewed journal publications and media engagement. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, no. NCT04344665

Filamentation of Bessel and Bessel-like beams has enabled a number of applications in the field of transparent materials processing. Spatial phase is an important parameter to control four-wave-mixing and the cross section of plasma tracks.

Neue Verfahren der molekulargenetischen Diagnostik ermöglichen eine umfassendere genetische Untersuchung von Patienten.

The material processing technique of “stealth” nanomachining is based on translating a longitudinally extended beam such as a Bessel beam into a transparent sample to generate extended nanochannels, which leads to subsequent internal stress that facilitates high quality cleaving. In this letter, we compare the quality of such cleaving in glass samples obtained using Bessel beams with both circularly symmetric and elliptical transverse profiles. We find that the use of an elliptical Bessel beam generates elliptical nanochannels, which greatly improves the cleavage quality and cuts material strength by aligning the centre of the cleavage plane with the centre of the machined channels. These results are interpreted using numerical simulations that show how elliptical nanochannels enhance the intensity and localization of the tensile stress distribution in glass under bending when compared to channels with circular cross-sections.

Ultrafast lasers have revolutionized material processing, opening a wealth of new applications in many areas of science. A recent technology that allows the cleaving of transparent materials via non-ablative processes is based on focusing and translating a high-intensity laser beam within a material to induce a well-defined internal stress plane. This then enables material separation without debris generation. Here, we use a non-diffracting beam engineered to have a transverse elliptical spatial profile to generate high-aspect-ratio elliptical channels in glass of a dimension 350  nm×710  nm and subsequent cleaved surface uniformity at the sub-micron level.

Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer of the lymphoid system that carries substantial importance in understanding the principles of cancer control for adolescent and young adult patients [1]. The disease typically involves lymph nodes with more disseminated disease patterns including the spleen, bone marrow, liver, and other extranodal sites. It is the most common cancer diagnosis in patients between the ages of 15 and 24 years and over 40 % of newly diagnosed Hodgkin lymphoma patients will be between the ages of 15 and 34 years [2]. Hodgkin lymphoma was an initial setting for demonstrating the curative potentials of radiation treatment and combination chemotherapy and patients with recurrent Hodgkin lymphoma were among the first to receive long-term benefits from treatment with autologous stem cell transplantation [3]. The 5-year survival of adolescent and young adult Hodgkin lymphoma patients is now in excess of 90 % [2]. With such curative potential in a population free of comorbidities that would otherwise affect survival, the management of patients with Hodgkin lymphoma characterizes the challenges of optimizing the balance between maximizing the eradication of the cancer and minimizing the late effects associated with the treatments provided.

Cancer is the most common disease-related cause of death in 15- to 29-year-olds in Canada [...]