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Background Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) is now one of the most common surgical procedures worldwide. It was initially defined for staged procedures in super or super-super obese, or in very complex patients. The primary objective of the study was to assess the safety of LSG for morbid-obese (MO, body mass index [BMI] >40 kg/m2) and super-morbid-obese (SMO, BMI >50 kg/m2) patients in terms of operative and postoperative complication rate. Methods This study involves a retrospective analysis of a prospective database that included data for patients who underwent LSG, between 2008 and 2017, in our institution. All LSG procedures were performed by the same two certified bariatric surgeons following a standardized surgical procedure. Data on operative and postoperative complications were collected for all the patients. Results A total of 713 patients were included in the study 495 (61.42%) were MO (mean age 46.06 ± 11.98 years) and 218 (30.58%) were SMO (mean age 42.98 ± 11.17 years). There were no significant differences between both groups in terms of minor and major postoperative complications or long-term complications. Postoperative mortality was slightly higher in the MO group but without statistically significant differences (MO 0.2%; SMO 0%). Long-term reoperation rate and late complications were higher in the MO group 6.12% versus 4.04% and 17.43% versus 15.15%, respectively. Reoperation for gastroesophageal reflux disease was higher in MO patients compared to SMO and weight issues reoperation higher in the SMO. Conclusion We found LSG as a safe procedure in both groups. Interestingly long-term reoperation and complications rates were higher in the MO group.Increasing evidence suggested that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) variants may be involved in the progression of various cancers. However, the association of the lncRNAs polymorphisms with the risk for esophagogastric junction adenocarcinoma (EGJA) is still unknown. In this case-control study, we selected two cancer-related lncRNAs polymorphisms (rs944289 C > T and rs7990916 C>T), and recruited a total of 1063 EGJA patients and 1677 noncancer controls to determine whether the lncRNAs rs944289 C > T and rs7990916 C > T polymorphisms could influence EGJA susceptibility and lymph node status. And SNPscan™ genotyping assay was applied to test the genotypes of the mentioned two variants. We found no statistically significant differences in the distribution of lncRNAs rs944289 C > T and rs7990916 C > T polymorphisms between EGJA patients and healthy controls. Similar negative findings were also revealed in the correlation of those polymorphisms with different lymph node status. However, after adjustment by multiple environmental factors, including gender, age, drinking, and smoking consumption, the stratified analyses showed that the lncRNAs rs944289 C > T variant was significantly related with the risk of EGJA in  T polymorphism may be associated with genetic susceptibility to EGJA in the less then 60 years and ever smoking populations.Background Multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) are associated with increased intensity of end-of-life (EOL) care, but their effect is not well explored in patients with cancer. Objective We examined EOL health care intensity and advance care planning (ACP) documentation to better understand the association between MCCs and these outcomes. Design Retrospective cohort study. STF-31 Setting/Subjects Patients aged 18+ years at UW Medicine who died during 2010-2017 with poor prognosis cancer, with or without chronic liver disease, chronic pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, dementia, diabetes with end-stage organ damage, end-stage renal disease, heart failure, or peripheral vascular disease. Measurements ACP documentation 30+ days before death, in-hospital death, and inpatient or intensive care unit (ICU) admission in the last 30 days. We performed logistic regression for outcomes. Results Of 15,092 patients with cancer, 10,596 (70%) had 1+ MCCs (range 1-8). Patients with cancer and heart failure had highest odds of hospitalization (odds ratio [OR] 1.67, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.46-1.91), ICU admission (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.76-2.41), or in-hospital death (OR 1.62, 95% CI 1.43-1.84) versus patients with cancer and other conditions. Patients with ACP 30+ days before death had lower odds of in-hospital death (OR 0.65, 95% CI 0.60-0.71), hospitalization (OR 0.67, 95% CI 0.61-0.74), or ICU admission (OR 0.71, 95% CI 0.64-0.80). Conclusions Patients with ACP 30+ days before death had lower odds of high-intensity EOL care. Further research needs to explore how to best use ACP to ensure patients receive care aligned with patient and family goals for care.Ceramides have emerged as important regulators of tissue metabolism that play essential roles in cardiometabolic disease. They are potent biomarkers of diabetes and heart disease and are now being measured clinically as predictors of major adverse cardiac events. Moreover, studies in rodents reveal that inhibitors of ceramide synthesis prevent or reverse the pathogenic features of type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, atherosclerosis, and cardiomyopathy. Herein the authors discuss inhibition of dihydroceramide desaturase-1, the final enzyme in the ceramide biosynthesis pathway, as a potential therapeutic approach to lower ceramides and combat cardiometabolic disease.The r-index is a tool for compressed indexing of genomic databases for exact pattern matching, which can be used to completely align reads that perfectly match some part of a genome in the database or to find seeds for reads that do not. This article shows how to download and install the programs ri-buildfasta and ri-align; how to call ri-buildfasta on an FASTA file to build an r-index for that file; and how to query that index with ri-align.Background Half a million new cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are registered annually, and therefore, the issue of the development of new fast and reliable methods for diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) remains urgent in modern phthisiology. Aims The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the Xpert MTB/RIF molecular genetic method on the diagnosis, clinical and radiological features, and efficacy of treatment of MDR-TB. Materials and Methods Patients with MDR-TB were divided into two groups. The first (study) group included patients (n = 412) in whom a mutation in the gene responsible for the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and resistance to rifampicin were detected using the Xpert MTB/RIF assay. The second group consisted of patients (n = 540) in whom TB was diagnosed using bacterioscopy and multidrug resistance was detected using inoculation on dense and liquid culture media. The results of bacterioscopic, bacteriological, molecular genetic, clinical studies and the efficacy of the treatment of 952 patients with MDR pulmonary TB were studied.