2015 and launch of first editorial

Long time since last post here on the blog - my apologies for the vacancy!

As the first post this year I would like to put forward a link to a recently published editorial I wrote for the Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine, that reviewed the progress of the Journal over the past few years. This journal has now really grown and is becoming a major stakeholder in Scandinavian acute medicine, providing a vehicle for academic work from the Nordic countries but also globally.
Please go read the full text editorial here.

Development, year on year

BJS news: new website, new app and the newest impact factor!

IF is out today and BJS is climbing! Although not yet back at the all-time-high in 2008 (at 4.921) it is currently at 4.839.

We are now second overall! (Only after Annals - which continues to decrease considerably, from 7.49 to 6.33 = biggest drop in the category!).

Excluding the others in the "surgery" category (some of which are really not competitors, such as Am J Surg Pathol, Endoscopy and Am J Transplant):

Third place is held by JACS (steady from last year at 4.5),
Surg Obest Rel Dis has increased to 4.12
Ann Surg Oncol, steady at 4.12
Archives declined from 4.4 to 4.1
Surgery declined to 3.3….etc etc

This just to give a few details form the surgical field of the IF.

Good thing is that we are among the very few top surgical journals with an increase (and in IF, when several others see no progress or even continued decline! For what it' worth (yes, IF is not everything) I think it is a sign of the efforts put into the Journal (I hope).

Next year we'll break the 5.0 barrier!

And... the newly refreshed web-page of the BJS is out, please click here for a view!

Finally, and a much awaited tool for BJS readers, is the new BJS app for iPad, which is downloadable at the BJS homepage, or through this link here.

Success in the Stavanger Surgical Research Group

My absence from the blog recently is due to an extensive work load over the past few months, yet with a pleasure twist, as three of the candidates in our research group have defended their PhD thesis over the past several weeks. Here are the summaries and brief overview of the champs!
Terje Meling MD defended his thesis on "Implementation of a fracture and dislocation registry. Epidemiology and scoring validity of long-bone fractures" based on the publications:

Reliable classification of children's fractures according to the comprehensive classification of long bone fractures by Müller.

Meling T, Harboe K, Enoksen CH, Aarflot M, Arthursson AJ, Søreide K.

Acta Orthop. 2013 Apr;84(2):207-12. doi: 10.3109/17453674.2012.752692. Epub 2012 Dec 18.

How reliable and accurate is the AO/OTA comprehensive classification for adult long-bone fractures?

Meling T, Harboe K, Enoksen CH, Aarflot M, Arthursson AJ, Søreide K.

J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2012 Jul;73(1):224-31. doi: 10.1097/TA.0b013e31824cf0ab.

Steppingstones to the implementation of an inhospital fracture and dislocation registry using the AO/OTA classification: compliance, completeness and commitment.

Meling T, Harboe K, Arthursson AJ, Søreide K.

Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2010 Oct 18;18:54. doi: 10.1186/1757-7241-18-54.

Incidence of traumatic long-bone fractures requiring in-hospital management: a prospective age- and gender-specific analysis of 4890 fractures.

Meling T, Harboe K, Søreide K.

Injury. 2009 Nov;40(11):1212-9. doi: 10.1016/j.injury.2009.06.003.

Tom Glomsaker MD defended his work on the use of ERCP in Norway, with the thesis entitled "ERCP in Norway. Patterns of activity and undesired events " and based on the publications as follows:

Patterns and predictive factors of complications after endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography.

Glomsaker T, Hoff G, Kvaløy JT, Søreide K, Aabakken L, Søreide JA; Norwegian Gastronet ERCP Group.

Br J Surg. 2013 Feb;100(3):373-80. doi: 10.1002/bjs.8992. Epub 2012 Dec 6.

Contemporary use of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP): a Norwegian prospective, multicenter study.

Glomsaker T, Søreide K, Hoff G, Aabakken L, Søreide JA; Norwegian Gastronet ERCP group.

Scand J Gastroenterol. 2011 Sep;46(9):1144-51. doi: 10.3109/00365521.2011.594085. 

A national audit of temporal trends in endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography in Norway.

Glomsaker T, Søreide K, Aabakken L, Søreide JA.

Scand J Gastroenterol. 2011 Jan;46(1):116-21. doi: 10.3109/00365521.2010.513063. Epub 2010 Aug 24. Erratum in: Scand J Gastroenterol. 2011 Jan;46(1):121.

In addition, a fourth study on patient-reported outcomes will be published sson in the Scand J Gastroenterology from this project.

And , last but not least, Bjørn Steinar Nedrebø MD, defended his thesis on "Colorectal Cancer in Norway - National Treatment Guidelines and Outcomes " of which his work is based on the publications :

Risk factors associated with poor lymph node harvest after colon cancer surgery in a national cohort.

Nedrebø B, Søreide K, Nesbakken A, Eriksen M, Søreide J, Kørner H; The Norwegian Colorectal Cancer Group.

Colorectal Dis. 2013 Apr 13. doi: 10.1111/codi.12245. [Epub ahead of print]

Excess mortality after curative surgery for colorectal cancer changes over time and differs for patients with colon versus rectal cancer.

Nedrebø BS, Søreide K, Eriksen MT, Kvaløy JT, Søreide JA, Kørner H.

Acta Oncol. 2012 Oct 29. [Epub ahead of print]

Survival effect of implementing national treatment strategies for curatively resected colonic and rectal cancer.

Nedrebø BS, Søreide K, Eriksen MT, Dørum LM, Kvaløy JT, Søreide JA, Kørner H; Norwegian Colorectal Cancer Registry.

Br J Surg. 2011 May;98(5):716-23. doi: 10.1002/bjs.7426. Epub 2011 Feb 21.

Congrats and well done!!!

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

Rudolph - probably the best known reindeer in the world - but do you know the other reindeers' names (see below for answer).

Rudolph first appeared in a 1939 booklet written by RL May.

His spouse's name is 'Clarice', and BBC has made a show on his son "Robbie the Reindeer". His brother "Rusty the Reindeer" appeared in a 2006 TV show in the US.

In 2012 Rudolph appeared as the frontcover of the British Journal of Surgery, albeit in a more anatomical figure than usually seen:

From the BJS front cover, December issue 2012 (photo A Montgomery)

One big question has never been answered over the years though: 

Why is Rudolph's nose red?

The scientific explanation to why Rudolph has a red nose is now clear. A recent research paper in the BMJ has investigated this and found that Rudolph’s nose is red because it is richly supplied with red blood cells, comprises a highly dense microcirculation, and is anatomically and physiologically adapted for reindeer to carry out their flying duties for Santa Claus.

Fig 3 Infrared image of a reindeer’s head after a treadmill test shows the presence of a red nose (arrow, panel A).23 Colours represent different temperatures: blue 15°C, white 19°C, and red 24°C. The dark band is the harness. Real time intravital video microscopy images of reindeer nasal microcirculatory network with hairpin-like (panel B) and related ring-like vasculature (panel C), similar to human nasal microcirculation. Reproduced with permission of the Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, University of Tromsø -reproduced from BMJ 2012.

from http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e8311

The names of the other 8 reindeers are:

Dasher, Dancer, Prancer Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen.

Medical info - collecting and curation in the internet era

Never has there been a larger stream of info available for humankind. Getting access to info is not the problem anymore, rather the selection, digestion and prioritizing of info is the key skills needed in modern information overload.

Notably, PubMed alone has now grown to include over 22 million references!

On this week's cover, the Science Translational Medicine new "Collections icons" are shown as if they were apps on a smart phone, linking users to the information they seek. Editor-selected highlights from the journal are grouped by subject to form more than 50 collections on topics such as cancer, biomarkers, vaccines, partnerships, and bioengineering, pluss many more; go see the web @  SciTM Collections.

[CREDIT: C. BICKEL/SCIENCE TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE]

Crowded house

Anyone recognize space limitation sin their lab? have a good w/e  ;-)

Revisions and more revisions...

This Friday's joke is probably something that every PhD student, or all scientific writers for that sake, can painfully relate to: Just when you thought you had it all down and finished your Magnus Opum Academica, ready for submission and done that job... it is returned from your coauthors and supervisor with request for a complete makeover and redo... well, it just exemplifies that writing is something most find difficult and it requires training and adherence to sound advise... hope to be able to share some writing advises on later occasions on this blog. Have a good w/e... and don't despair - you'll get your masterpiece published in the end!!  ;-)