2009

Fairman Studios will be creating several illustrations for an article appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery: The Role of Pantalar Arthrodesis in the Treatment of Paralytic Foot Deformities: A Long-Term Follow-up Study
By By Stefanos Provelengios, MD, Kyriakos A. Papavasiliou, MD, Margaritis J. Kyrkos, MD, John M. Kirkos, MD, and George A. Kapetanos, MD
Investigation performed at the 3rd Orthopaedic Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Medical School, “Papageorgiou” General Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece

Background: Pantalar arthrodesis is considered by many to be the final operative option before amputation for the treatment of paralytic foot deformities. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the long-term results of pantalar arthrodesis with regard to its impact on the adjacent joints and the walking ability of patients with paralytic foot deformities.

The December issue of JAAPA (DECEMBER 2009, 22(12), JAAPA 1) will feature an article entitled, “H1N1 in perspective: The clinical impact of a novel influenza A virus” The H1N1 influenza virus burst onto the global media stage this year and brought to the foreground viruses that have caused human disease on a pandemic scale since 1918. Clinicians who encounter patients with influenzalike illness (ILI) are responsible for identifying those who are at risk for flu complications, judiciously ordering laboratory studies, and dispensing antiviral medications. The goals of this article are to provide a clinically based review of influenza and to place the current H1N1 flu outbreak in historical and clinical context with other influenza viruses.

Fairman Studios will be creating several illustrations for an article appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery: Operative Management of Distal Radial Fractures with 2.4-Millimeter Locking Plates: A Multicenter Prospective Case Series
By By Jesse B. Jupiter, MD, M.Marent-Huber, and the LCP Study Group*
Investigation performed at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and AO Clinical Investigation and Documentation, Dubendorf, Switzerland

Background: In the past decade, there has been a trend toward open reduction and internal fixation of unstable distal radial fractures. There are now more than thirty different implant designs specific for the fixation of distal radial fractures. A multicenter prospective study of a case series was conducted to determine the efficacy of the operative management of distal radial fractures stabilized with 2.4-mm locking plates.

Fairman Studios will be creating several illustrations for an article appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery: Midtarsal Arthrodesis in the Treatment of Charcot Midfoot Arthropathy
By By V. James Sammarco, MD, G. James Sammarco, MD, Earl W.Walker Jr., MD, and Ronald P. Guiao, MD
Investigation performed at the Cincinnati SportsMedicine and Orthopaedic Center, Cincinnati, Ohio

Background: Fracture-dislocation of the midfoot with collapse of the longitudinal arch is common in patients with neuropathic arthropathy of the foot. In this study, we describe a technique of midfoot arthrodesis with use of intramedullary axial screw fixation and review the results and complications following use of this technique.

Fairman Studios is creating new surgical illustrations for the excision and repair of breast tissue. Xoft specializes in radiation oncology with the Axxent® Electronic Brachytherapy System® uses proprietary, miniaturized X-ray tube technology to apply radiation directly to the target. Without radioactive isotopes, heavy shielding, or major capital investment, the Axxent platform delivers cost-effective results for an expanding list of indications.

At the 64th Annual Conference of the Association of Medical Illustrators, held in Bozeman, MT, an Award of Excellence in the Instructional Tone category was awarded for Laparoscopic Gastric Band Placement from the Hunter Atlas for Minimally Invasive Surgery.

The AMI Annual Conference will be held in Richmond, VA in 2009. Here are a few things we will be involved in:Plenary: Vesalius Trust for Visual Communication in the Health Sciences, www.vesaliustrust.org
Jennifer E. Fairman, CMI, FAMI – Moderator
8:00am – 9:30am, Saturday Aug 1, 2009
(0.7 CEUs ARt, 0.7 CEUs Biomed. Science)

The Vesalius Trust for Visual Communication in the Health Sciences is proud to host this Vesalian Scholars’ Session devoted to student research in the areas of medical illustration and biomedical communication. The Trust is pleased to have awarded significant financial grants this year in support of these student projects, and we welcome each of the student presenters. In addition, we congratulate every Vesalius Trust grant applicant, and we wish all of this year’s biocommunication graduates success, five of whom will present the research done as part of their graduate studies:

These award recipients will describe their research goals, problem-solving techniques and general methodology, including the use of traditional and innovative, computer-based techniques. Attendees will gain keen insight into the clinical, biomedical, and instructional design research currently being undertaken by medical illustration students in North America.

Concurrent: Vesalius Trust Poster Session
Jennifer E. Fairman, CMI, FAMI – Moderator
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Wednesday July 29, 2009
(0.05 CEUs Art, 0.05 CEUs Biomed Science)

This year the Vesalius Trust is expanding this opportunity so that participation by students isn’t limited to the time allotted to a concurrent session by adding a new Vesalius Trust Poster Session component to the program. The Vesalius Trust is excited to continue to bring to the AMI Continuing Education in the form of current an ongoing research, especially from those who are just entering the field, bringing with them the newest contributions to the disciplines of art, science, and technology. We look forward to giving students the opportunity to present in a formal professional setting, to share, collaborate, network, learn and contribute overall. ALL APPLICANTS are invited to participate in the poster session component. Applicants who would like to participate in this opportunity must be present at the meeting.

The December issue of JAAPA (DECEMBER 2008, 21(12), JAAPA 1) will feature an article entitled, “Use of drug-eluting stents for patients with coronary heart disease” Coronary atherosclerotic disease remains the leading cause of mortality in the industrialized world. One American dies from coronary heart disease (CHD) every minute, with an estimated 1.2 million MIs occurring annually in the United States. 1 With the epidemic of obesity in this country and Americans’ increasingly sedentary lifestyle, more patients are at risk of developing CHD than ever before. Additionally, more patients are developing abnormal lipid profiles at younger ages, including elevated LDL and decreased HDL cholesterol levels. Abnormal lipid profiles are a well-documented risk factor for the development of atherosclerosis. The coupling of abnormal lipid profiles with vascular injury promotes atherosclerosis, causing symptomatic CHD, including angina pectoris and MI. When symptoms can no longer be medically managed, more invasive options, including percutaneous intervention (PCI) and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), may be advised. This article reviews the factors leading to development of CHD and the evolution of PCI technology, discusses how to identify which patients are the best candidates for drugeluting stent (DES) implantation, and explains how to maintain patient safety after PCI.

Fairman Studios created a stroke Illustration for Vital Sign: Tales from Intensive Care by Ken Hillma, a UNSW publication. This book is a gripping collection of stories about the experiences of intensive care patients, their families and carers, is about ordinary people facing terrible tragedies and the ways they cope with them. The majority of us now die in hospitals and many of us will end up in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for the last few days of our lives. Yet for most people, what happens in an ICU remains a mystery. This collection of stories about the experiences of intensive care patients, their families and carers, is about ordinary people facing terrible tragedies and the ways they cope with them. The author, a practicing intensive care clinician, takes the reader on a journey inside an ICU and reveals to the public, for the first time, what really happens inside ICU. The book traces the personal tragedies of ICU patients and their families and the struggles of staff providing care in this critical environment.

Fairman Studios will be creating several illustrations for an article appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery: Surgical Treatment of Main Thoracic Scoliosis with Thoracoscopic Anterior Instrumentation. A Five-Year Follow-up Study
By Peter O. Newton, MD, Vidyadhar V. Upasani, MD, Juliano Lhamby, MD, Valerie L. Ugrinow, BA, Jeff B. Pawelek, BS, and Tracey P. Bastrom, MA
Investigation performed at Rady Children’s Hospital and Health Center, San Diego, California

Background: The surgical outcomes in patients with scoliosis at two years following anterior thoracoscopic spinal instrumentation and fusion have been reported. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the results at five years.

BVGH is active in the area of incentives – developing and advocating for key funding models like the priority review vouchers (PRVs) and advanced market commitments (AMCs). BVGH is also working to develop new incentives that will spur industry to action.

McGraw Hill licenses FS brain illustrations for David Ropeik’s new book How Risky Is It Really. International risk expert David Ropeik takes an in-depth look at our perceptions of risk and explains the hidden factors that make us unnecessarily afraid of relatively small threats and not afraid enough of some really big ones. This read is a comprehensive, accessible, and entertaining mixture of what’s been discovered about how and why we fear‹too much or too little. It brings into focus the danger of The Perception Gap: when our fears don’t match the facts, and we make choices that create additional risks. This book will not decide for you what is really risky and what isn’t. That’s up to you. How Risky Is It Really will tell you how you make those decisions. Understanding how we perceive risk is the first step toward making wiser and healthier choices for ourselves as individuals and for society as a whole.

Fairman Studios will be creating several illustrations for an article appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery: Treatment of Scaphoid Waist Nonunions with an Avascular Proximal Pole and Carpal Collapse A Comparison of Two Vascularized Bone Grafts
By David B. Jones Jr., MD, Heinz Bürger, MD, Allen T. Bishop, MD, and Alexander Y. Shin, MD
Investigation performed at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and Landeskrankenhaus Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria

Background: Surgically, it is difficult to achieve union of a scaphoid nonunion that is associated with osteonecrosis of the proximal pole, and those with carpal collapse are especially difficult to treat. A variety of vascularized bone grafts can be used. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two types of vascularized bone graft‹a distal radial pedicle graft and a free vascularized medial femoral condyle graft‹in the treatment of scaphoid waist nonunions associated with proximal pole osteonecrosis and carpal collapse.

Fairman Studios will be creating several illustrations for an article appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery: Avulsion of the Proximal Hamstring Origin
By David G. Wood, FRACS, Iain Packham, FRCS(Tr&Orth), S. Paul Trikha, FRCS(Tr&Orth), and James Linklater, FRANZCR
Investigation performed at the North Sydney Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Centre, Sydney, Australia

Background: The torn hamstring is a common athletic injury. The purpose of the present study was to review the clinical presentation of this injury, the diagnostic imaging findings, the surgical technique of reattachment, and the likely clinical outcome of surgery for the treatment of avulsion of the proximal hamstring origin.

Fairman Studios has been asked to create illustrations depicting innovative flavor approaches to enable consumer acceptance on sensorially challenging health care products: Improving efficacy of Health Care products often brings challenges in the form of actives and solvents/carrier systems that have a significant consumer trade-off of negative taste attributes such as bitterness, numbing, burning, harshness, and astringency. Innovative flavor approaches deliver taste-masking synergies across sensory channels to overcome significant taste challenges. FS has illustrated how sensory signals are processed in the brain — the thalamus, located in the center of the brain, receives all sensory inputs and then determines what signals to forward to the Cerebral Cortex. The Olfactory, Gustatory and Trigeminal sensory pathways are illustrated.

Kirkland and Ellis commisioned Fairman Studios to create a coronal view of the prostate, illustrating Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia for a legal presentation.

Illustrations depicting how a cell can change its shape are being created for University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute. As the cell changes its shape, it changes the organization of the nucleus by means of cytoskeletal fibers “tugging” on the nucleus. The cytoskeletal fibers ring the cell just inside the plasma membrane and run from the cell surface to the folded-up nucleus where they interact with a receptor called the Lamin/Nesprin/Sun Complex. In a round cell, the cytoskeletal fibers are loose like a rubber band without any tension on it. An elongated cell stretches and pulls on the “rubber bands” stretching them out and loading them with tension that pulls on the nucleus, causing it to unfold to the oval shape. This also changes the Chromatin within the nucleus from peripheral, dense clumps to a more dispersed distribution‹this can be depicted as an amorphous, fibrous material‹it is actually the DNA of the genome. It also changes the Nuclear Pore Complexes from being bunched together within the folds of the nuclear membrane to more widely dispersed embedded within the membrane of the stretched nucleus. These nuclear pores are large protein complexes that form a tube penetrating the nuclear envelope. The cell is embedded in a 3-D fibrous network of proteins‹just like in some of the previous work you did for us. As the cell changes its shape, it cuts up the 3-D fibrils encasing it, and deposits new fibers around itself that it synthesizes called Fibronectin Fibrils – these events are required for this shape change. .

Fairman Studios will be creating several illustrations for an article appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery: Traumatic Valgus Instability of the Elbow: Pathoanatomy and Results of Direct Repair
By Marc J. Richard, MD, J. Mack Aldridge III, MD, Ethan R.Wiesler, MD, and David S. Ruch, MD
Investigation performed at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Background: The medial collateral ligament provides valgus stability to the elbow. The purpose of the present study was to describe the pathoanatomy of acute traumatic medial collateral ligament ruptures and to report the rationale and results of direct repair.

Professor and Chair William Bentley reported on the progress of the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices. The Institute’s Formative Committee has been laying the groundwork for the Institute’s major goals and services: to connect inventors and engineers with clinical practices, to serve as an accelerator for biomedical device creation, and to provide internships for students. “The overarching purpose of the Institute is to get devices out of the labs and into practice,” Bentley explained, “using the ‘Fischell Factors’‹the same development criteria Dr. Fischell uses for his own devices and business ventures.” Bentley also offered guests his vision of bioengineering’s future, in which ever-smarter medical devices would not just be implanted, but capable of monitoring their status and the status of the patient, and reporting back to doctors.

The December issue of JAAPA (DECEMBER 2008, 21(12), JAAPA 1) will feature an article entitled, “The evaluation of liver dysfunction: When to suspect portal hypertension” A 58-year-old man presented to the emergency department in 1997 with an upper GI hemorrhage and was acutely treated for the bleeding. He was found to have esophageal varices caused by cirrhosis-related portal hypertension. Within 3 months, the patient underwent a transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) placement; he was also evaluated and placed on the list to receive a liver transplant. Throughout the years, the shunt was revised seven times because of occlusion; endoscopic banding was performed to treat recurrent variceal hemorrhages on 18 occasions; and the patient developed encephalopathy. Medical management of his condition consisted of propranolol, isosorbide, lactulose, fluid restriction, and dietary changes. A portal vein thrombosis caused by TIPS occlusion removed him from the liver transplant list. Despite this complicated course, however, the patient was 69 years old at the time this article was written and has survived for 11 years with this condition. An understanding of portal hypertension, as well as knowing how to diagnose and adequately manage its complications, can allow PAs to extend the survival of their affected patients.

Fairman Studios is finishing illustrations of the cell’s method of cutting through the basement membrane using a specialized cell extension called an ‘invadopodium’. Several features of the invadopodium should be highlighted — the actin fibers driving its formation and protrusion thru the BM and underlying extracellular matrix molecules, the main ‘molecular scissor’ used by cells (called MT1-MMP) to cut thru the BM, and different sets of cell surface adhesion molecules (called ‘integrins’) used to bind the BM as well as the underlying ‘interstitial’ matrix.

The editors have chosen Fairman Studios submitted cover artwork to be featured on our January issue of Cell Host & Microbe. The cover depicts the feature article which describes the durable protection from Herpes Simplex Virus-2 transmission following intravaginal application of siRNAs targeting both a viral and host gene. Fairman Studios’ depiction illustrates the idea of knocking down both viral and host gene to achieve durable protection from viral infection in mice. Illustration by Jennifer E. Fairman, Fairman Studios, LLC.

Fairman Studios will be creating several illustrations for an article appearing in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery: Combined Intra-Articular and Varus Opening Wedge Osteotomy for Lateral Depression and Valgus Malunion of the Proximal Part of the Tibia
By By Gino M.M.J. Kerkhoffs, MD, PhD, Maarten V. Rademakers, MD, Mark Altena, MD, and Ren’e K.Marti, MD, PhD
Investigation performed at the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Orthopedic Research Center Amsterdam, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Background: Reconstructive surgical measures for treatment of posttraumatic deformities of the lateral tibial plateau are seldom reported on in the literature. We report the long-term follow-up results of a consecutive series of reconstructive osteotomies performed to treat depression and valgus malunions of the proximal part of the tibia.

Happy New Year and thanks again for yet another successful year!! Fairman Studios is currently entering it’s 10th year of business and is updating it’s “What’s New Section”. As can be seen by the entries already posted below, a lot of work has been done in 2008, and 2009 is already geared up to be another year filled with many interesting and exciting projects. More to come on our 2009 page, also being updated.