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Delayed treatment with nirmatrelvir/ritonavir could remain effective in patients with Omicron BA2.2 variant of COVID-19

Dear Editor, In late February 2022, the Omicron BA.2.2 subvariant drove the outbreak of COVID-19 and rapidly spread through many parts of the world. Omicron-infected...

Tragus pressure-guided removal of airway devices for safe emergence from sedation: A randomised controlled trial

Dear Editor, Emergence from anaesthesia and deep sedation is the transition from unconsciousness to the return of awareness and airway reflexes. The chief patterns of...

Clinical characteristics of macrolide-resistant Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections among hospitalised children in Singapore

Dear Editor, Mycoplasma pneumoniae has become the leading cause of paediatric community-acquired pneumonia in countries where pneumococcal vaccination is included in the national immunisation programme,...

Managing adult asthma during the COVID-19 pandemic: A 2022 review and current recommendations

Asthma is the most prevalent chronic respiratory disease, estimated to affect more than 300 million people worldwide.1 First recognised in December 2019, the coronavirus...

Antiphospholipid and other autoantibodies in COVID-19 patients: A Singapore series

Dear Editor, Thrombosis is an unexpected complication of COVID-19 initially reported in 3 patients from China.1 These patients tested positive for immunoglobulin (Ig) A anticardiolipin...

Nutrition support practices for critically ill patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2: A multicentre observational study in Singapore

Within 3 weeks of the World Health Organization declaring the COVID-19 pandemic on 11 March 2020, the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) and...

Challenges and considerations in delivering nutritional therapy in the ICU during COVID-19 pandemic

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has created unprecedented challenges for healthcare workers in Singapore and across the world. Providing clinical nutrition and metabolic care to...

Evaluation of a health screening protocol for recovered COVID-19 patients before “return-to-play” and strenuous physical activity

Dear Editor, We conducted a prospective, single-centre cohort study to develop guidance for military personnel returning to strenuous activities following SARS-CoV-2 infection. The patients underwent...

Case Series of Bronchoscopic Removal of Tracheobronchial Foreign Body in Six Adults

Gustav Killian reported the first case of bronchoscopic removal of foreign body (FB) from the trachea in 1897. Since then, rigid bronchoscopy under general...

A Review of Patients with High-risk Carcinoma of the Cervix Treated with Combined Surgery and Postoperative Radiotherapy

It is generally accepted that early stage invasive carcinoma of the cervix, stage I to stage IIA disease, can be treated with equal effectiveness...

Sudden Profound Hypoxaemia in the Intensive Care Unit—A Case Report

Significant arterial hypoxaemia is defined as a partial pressure of oxygen (PaO2) that is less than 60 mmHg or a percentage of oxyhaemoglobin (%...

Combined High-frequency Ventilation (CHFV) in the Treatment of Acute Lung Injury—A Case Report

The role of ventilatory support in acute lung injury is supportive, whilst the damage to alveolar-capillary membranes resolves and alveolar stability is restored. The...

Contributions of Respiratory Care Practitioners to Intensive Care: A Review

The intensive care unit (ICU) is a complex environment in which multidisciplinary expertise has been shown to enhance clinical outcomes. For example, the availability...

Ventilatory Strategies for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) was first described by Ashbaugh et al in 1967. The original authors detailed the presence of tachypnoea, hypoxaemia, decreased...

The Oxygen Delivery Debate—A Review

Multisystem organ failure occurs in a large proportion of critically ill patients and is a major cause of death in this group of patients....

Controlled Observations in Critical Care Medicine: The Therapeutic Trial

Central to the combined diagnostic and therapeutic approach to the critically ill subject is the evaluation of both the basal physiologic status and its...

Use of Central Venous Lines in Paediatrics—A Local Experience

Peripheral access by venous cut down, once popular in the 1950s and 1960s, has almost become obsolete with the introduction of the Seldinger technique...

Impact on Quality of Patient Care and Procedure Use in the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) Following Reorganisation

Critical care is costly as it is labour intensive and involves expensive life support technology. In the United States, the intensive care units (ICUs)...

Intensivists for the Intensive Care Unit—Do They Make a Difference?

Does Critical Care Medicine exist and what defines its area of practice? Different countries have embarked on their own journeys of discovery, and have...

Soft Tissue Cover in Compound and Complicated Tibial Fractures Using Microvascular Flaps

Compound tibial fractures are high-energy traumatic injuries, which are frequently associated with high incidence of complications like infection and failure of bony union leading...

Excimer Laser Phototherapeutic Keratectomy for Recurrent Corneal Erosions

Recurrent cornea1 erosion (RCE) syndrome is a commonly encountered clinical condition which may be difficult to treat. Hansen first described it in 1872. This article...

Re-expansion Pulmonary Oedema Following One-lung Ventilation —A Case Report

A 15-year-old female patient weighing 40 kg with asymptomatic but severe scoliosis was admitted for correction of a skeletal deformity via a thoracoscopic anterior...

A Prospective Study of Infections with Atypical Pneumonia Organisms in Acute Exacerbations of Chronic Bronchitis

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a disease state characterised by the presence of airflow limitation that is generally progressive, partially reversible and caused...

Hospitalised Low-risk Community-acquired Pneumonia: Outcome and Potential for Cost-savings

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common illness with nearly 4 million adults diagnosed each year in USA with more than 600,000 hospita1isations. The associated...

Long-term Outcome and Disease Control in Near-fatal Asthma

Rising trends in mortality in asthma have been reported from many countries, including Asian countries such as Hong Kong. Asthma deaths have been associated...

Ethnicity, Obstructive Sleep Apnoea and Ischaemic Heart Disease

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a condition whereby there is snoring associated with complete or partial cessation of breathing during sleep, associated with nocturnal...

Rapid Mycobacterial Tuberculosis Detection in Bronchoalveolar Lavage Samples by Polymerase Chain Reaction in Patients with Upper Lobe Infiltrates and Bronchiectasis

Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB), the incidence of which is rising, poses a major health problem. It is caused by <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i>. The isolation of <i>Mycobacterium...

Beneficial Effect of Combination Therapy with Ozagrel and Pranlukast in Exercise-induced Asthma Demonstrated by Krypton-81m Ventilation Scintigraphy—A Case Report

Exercise is a common stimulus of bronchoconstriction in subjects with asthma. Exercise-induced asthma is a temporary increase in airway resistance that occurs after several...

Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Exercise intolerance is a hallmark of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Although exertional symptoms may be mild at the outset, exercise limitation is the...

Ethnic Differences in Genetic Susceptibility to Atopy and Asthma in Singapore

Twin studies have indicated that both asthma and atopy are largely regulated by genetic factors. However, the genetics is complex, involving an interaction of...

Human Genetic Susceptibility to Tuberculosis

The World Health Organization has declared that the recent resurgence of tuberculosis (TB) is a global emergency. Southeast Asia, which is seeing the greatest...

Subcutaneous Emphysema and Pneumomediastinum after Endotracheal Anaesthesia

Pneumomediastinum is a well-recognised clinical entity. It may present either intraoperatively or postoperatively from a number of possible causes. This article is available only as...

A Case Report of Aspergillus Hypersensitivity Syndrome with Obstructing Bronchial Aspergillosis

The spectrum of pulmonary aspergillosis includes saprophytic colonisation, hypersensitivity syndromes and invasive lung disease. There has been a tendency to classify these syndromes as...

Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome—Report of Three Cases

Sleep-related breathing disorders are widely recognised as important causes of morbidity and mortality over the past 3 decades. The obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS)...

Audit of Oxygen Therapy in Acute General Medical Wards Following an Educational Programme

The rational basis for supplemental oxygen (O<sub>2</sub>) treatment is well established. Long-term O<sub>2</sub> therapy improves survival and quality of life in patients with chronic...

The Predictive Value of Intraoperative ST-segment Monitoring as a Marker of Myocardial Injury

Patients with ischaemic heart disease have a high incidence of perioperative ischaemia resulting in an increased risk of cardiac events in the post-surgical period.1...

Active Management of a Patient with Endstage Pulmonary Emphysema Using Lung Volume Reduction Surgery and Intensive Rehabilitation

A 65-year-old Chinese man with a 30-pack year history of cigarette smoking was referred to our institution for further management of chronic obstructive pulmonary...

Endobronchial Mass in a Patient with Burkholderia pseudomallei Infection

The diagnosis of Burkholderia pseudomallei infection is based on culture of clinical specimens such as blood or other body fluids, or serology using indirect...

Endobronchial Stenting in Patients Requiring Mechanical Ventilation for Major Airway Obstruction

Few things are as dramatic as respiratory arrest from major airway obstruction. Major airway obstruction frequently leads to well-defined clinical sequelae, namely shunt-associated hypoxaemia...

Clinical Update on Occupational Asthma

Occupational asthma is the most common occupational respiratory disease in the United Kingdom and also in Singapore. Recent estimates of the proportion of adult...

Effect of Different Endotracheal Suctioning Systems on Cardiorespiratory Parameters of Ventilated Patients

Endotracheal suctioning is a routine procedure performed in the intensive care unit (ICU) to remove secretions from the tracheobronchial tree. This is to maintain...

The Role of Early Tracheostomy in Critically Ill Neurosurgical Patients

In medical history, tracheostomy is one of the oldest operations performed. There are indications that the Egyptians first employed this procedure more than 3500...

Effects of a Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programme on Physiologic and Psychosocial Outcomes in Patients with Chronic Respiratory Disorders

Pulmonary rehabilitation is a multi-disciplinary programme of care for patients with chronic respiratory impairment that is individually designed to optimise physical and social performance...

Recent Advances in the Obstructive Sleep Apnoea/Hypopnoea Syndrome

The past decade has seen a rapid increase in the number of patients being referred for investigation for the obstructive sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome (OSAHS)....

A Review of Cutaneous Granulomas and Lupus Vulgaris Following BCG Vaccination in a Skin Hospital in Singapore

BCG vaccines are live vaccines derived from a strain of Mycobacterium bovis that was attenuated by Calmette and Guerin at the Pasteur Institute in...

A Twelve-year Review of Radical Cystectomies in Singapore General Hospital

Bladder carcinoma is the tenth most common cancer affecting men in Singapore. It is more common in men with an age-standardised incidence rate of...

All that Wheezes is not Asthma—Broncholithiasis, a Forgotten Disease

Asthma is a very common condition which presents clinically with cough, shortness of breath and wheezing. However, ‘all that wheezes is not asthma’, is...

Subdural Block—From a Spinal? A Case Report

There have been multiple reports of accidental subdural blocks published in the last 20 years. Majority of these have been the result of an...

Problems Related to Epidural Analgesia for Postoperative Pain Control

Epidural analgesia has been shown to provide excellent pain relief following thoracotomy, abdominal and other surgery. Studies have shown improvement in specific variables with...

Audit of Total Parenteral Nutrition in an Adult Surgical Intensive Care

Total parenteral nutrition (TPN) may contribute to good outcome in selected groups of patients. Parenteral nutrition is highly effective in reversing effects attributable to...

Asthma Disease Management: A Provider’s Perspective

The burden of asthma appears to be increasing worldwide, especially in societies undergoing rapid urbanisation, and both morbidity and mortality from asthma have increased...

Emergency Department Asthma: Compliance with an Evidence-based Management Algorithm

Attendance at the emergency medicine department (EMD) for acute exacerbation is an important milestone in the natural history of patients with asthma. It is...

Four-month Chemotherapy in the Treatment of Smear-negative Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Results at 30 to 60 Months

Patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) are usually treated with a 6-month regimen in which chemotherapy is administered daily, intermittently or as a combined...

Bacteriologically-negative Pulmonary Tuberculosis—The Singapore Tuberculosis Control Unit Experience

The management of a patient as for pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in the setting of negative bacteriology would have to take into account not only...

Asthma in Light of Patient Documents. A Factor Analytic Study

The lack of uniform criteria for asthma handicaps the diagnosis, the systematic documentation of cases and the consistent reporting of studies addressing asthma. It...

Malignant Mesothelioma: Experience at the Singapore General Hospital

Malignant mesothelioma is a rare tumour and is typically associated with asbestos exposure. In endemic areas, it has an estimated incidence as high as...

Transurethral Resection of Prostate (TURP) Through The Decades – A Comparison of Results Over the Last Thirty Years in a Single Institution in Asia

Over the last 70 years, transurethral resection of prostate (TURP) has been used in the surgical treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and is...

Acute Isolated Sphenoid Sinusitis

Isolated infection of the sphenoid sinus is uncommon. It usually occurs in conjunction with infection of the other paranasal sinuses. Acute isolated sphenoid sinusitis...

Audit of Diagnostic and Interventional Craniocervical Catheter Angiographic Procedures at the Singapore General Hospital

Catheter angiography has long been considered the diagnostic standard by which the accuracy of other vascular imaging modalities are compared, given its superior contrast...

Pulmonary Hypereosinophilia

Eosinophilic lung diseases encompass a heterogenous spectrum of lung disorders defined by increased eosinophils in blood and/or tissue. In 1952, Crofton et al proposed...

An Unusual Cause of Pulmonary Haemorrhage in a Patient with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Strongyloides stercoralis is an intestinal nematode which causes a chronic but usually asymptomatic infection in humans. However, in immunocompromised patients, parasitic larvae can develop...

A Case Report of Occupational Asthma due to Gluteraldehyde Exposure

Worldwide, asthma is estimated to affect between 5% and 10% of the population and, among adults, 4% to 9% of these cases have been...

Spectrum of Dentofacial Deformities: A Retrospective Survey

Deformity refers to distortion of any part of the body. The term dentofacial is related to the dental arches and their effects on facial...

The Haze and Health: A Blog About the Fog

The haze is an atmospheric phenomenon where pollutant particles accumulate in the air and obscure the normal clarity of the sky. In Singapore, this...

Can Long-term Corticosteroids Lead to Blindness? A Case Series of Central Serous Chorioretinopathy Induced by Corticosteroids

Central serous chorioretinopathy (CSCR) is an idiopathic disorder characterised by serous detachment of the macula, retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) detachment and areas of RPE...

SARS: How to Manage Future Outbreaks?

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which crossed from wild animals at live markets to man in mid-November...

Ethambutol-associated Optic Neuropathy

Tuberculosis (TB) has been present since ancient times. Around 460 BC, Hippocrates identified phthisis, which is the Greek term for consumption (TB seemed to...

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning: A Five-year Review at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore

Carbon monoxide (CO) is an odourless, tasteless and toxic gas and is the most abundant pollutant in the lower atmosphere. It is produced largely...

Swallowed Foreign Bodies in Children: Report of Four Unusual Cases

Foreign body (FB) ingestion in children is a frequent and frightening experience to the patients and caregivers. It is a common paediatric problem necessitating...

The Clinical Predictors of Hypertension and Sleepiness in an Asian Population with Sleep-disordered Breathing

Sleep physicians have only recently began to learn much about the epidemiology of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) from large, well conducted prospective community-based studies. These...

Sarcoidosis with Granulomatous Hepatitis and Autoimmune Endocrine Involvement

Sarcoidosis is a systemic granulomatous disease of unknown aetiology. It emerges in the form of hiler adenopathy and interstitial pulmonary disease in most cases. This...

A Review of Clinical Pathway Data of 1663 Total Knee Arthroplasties in a Tertiary Institution in Singapore

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) has been established as an effective treatment modality for patients with symptomatic knee arthritis. It provides predictable decrement in pain,...

Cardiovascular Changes in Children with Snoring and Obstructive Sleep Apnoea

Sleep disordered breathing (SDB) is a spectrum of diseases ranging from primary snoring to obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). A recent review suggested that the...

Obesity and Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Hypopnoea Syndrome in Singapore Children

Obesity is becoming a problem of epidemic proportions and is perhaps, the most pervasive medical problem faced by medical providers today. It is a...

Sleep Disorders in Children: The Singapore Perspective

Sleep problems are common in children. For example, snoring occurs in more than 25% of Singapore children1 and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) occurs in...

Diagnosis and Evaluation of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea in Children

Children with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) may present with nocturnal and/or diurnal symptoms. The history is best obtained from parents, or siblings who share...

The Scope of Paediatric Sleep Medicine

Despite apparent similarities to adult sleep medicine, the disorders of paediatric sleep medicine have a distinct epidemiology and pathophysiology. During childhood, the physiology of...

Obstructive Sleep Apnoea in Singapore: Polysomnography Data From a Tertiary Sleep Disorders Unit

Overnight attended polysomnography (PSG) in the sleep laboratory has been the gold standard to confirm the presence and severity of obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA)....

The Relationship between Postoperative Complications and Outcomes after Hip Fracture Surgery

Hip fractures constitute a major health concern for older persons and are associated with significant morbidity and mortality, with 1-year mortality rates ranging from...

Advanced Burkitt’s Lymphoma Presenting With Jejunal Perforation

Burkitt’s lymphoma (BL) is a high grade B-cell neoplasm under the umbrella of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas. It is predominantly seen in children but may also...

Impact of the Singapore National Asthma Program (SNAP) on Preventor-Reliever Prescription Ratio in Polyclinics

According to the World Health Organization/Global Initiative on Asthma (WHO/GINA) report on the global burden of asthma, Singapore is an intermediate-risk country for asthma...

Arteriovenous Fistula Aneurysm – Plicate, Not Ligate

Arteriovenous fistulae (AVF) are created for haemodialysis in patients with end-stage renal failure. While AVF is a lifeline for these patients, its creation is...

Perforated Appendicitis in Children: Benefits of Early Laparoscopic Surgery

Despite perforated appendicitis (PA) being a common surgical emergency in childhood, controversy still exists with regard to its management in this era of minimal...

Peritoneo-Cutaneous Fistula Secondary to Skin Excoriation from a Large Chronic Incisional Hernia

Incisional hernias are common complications following abdominal surgery with an incidence of 2% to 20% after midline laparotomy. Umbilical fluid discharge is, however, an...

T Lymphocyte Activation Profiles in Peripheral Blood of Long-Versus Short-Term Residents of Kuwait: Comparison with Asthmatics

The Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003 exposed the residents of Kuwait and several neighbouring countries to high levels toxicants with the capacity to...

Lung Cancer: Recent Advances

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related mortality in the world. It accounts for almost a million deaths annually and resulted in...

Difference in Asthma Control Test™ (ACT) Scores in Three Different Clinical Practice Settings

The prevalence of asthma ranges from 1% to 18% worldwide and it remains a significant cause of morbidity and economic burden despite advances in...

Epidemiology and Management of Surgical Upper Limb Infections in Patients with End-stage Renal Failure

Hand infections are common in the general population, and their management is usually uncomplicated. Several papers have noted that patients with diabetes mellitus have...

Clinical Features of Allergic Rhinitis and Skin Prick Test Analysis Based on the ARIA Classification: A Preliminary Study in Malaysia

Allergic rhinitis (AR) is a common disease worldwide and is known to cause serious implications to the physical and mental health status of the...

Inadvertent Haemodialysis in a Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patient with Hypercalcaemia

Malaysia is a country with an intermediate burden of tuberculosis (TB) with a prevalence of 121 cases per 100,000 population per year. TB usually...

Brachial Approach for Coronary Angiography and Intervention: Totally Obsolete, or a Feasible Alternative When Radial Access is Not Possible?

The possible methods of reaching the coronary vasculature using a percutaneous technique are limitless: the radial, femoral, brachial, ulnar, subclavian and axillary arteries, and...

The Singapore National Healthcare Group Diabetes Registry – Descriptive Epidemiology of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes mellitus is one of the most challenging global health problems in the 21st century. It is associated with excess mortality and significant morbidity...

Functional Outcomes of Cancer Patients in an Inpatient Rehabilitation Setting

Cancer is the leading cause of death and the second most common cause of hospitalisation in Singapore. Cancer rehabilitation aims to help the patient...

Sir John Wenman Crofton

Sir John Crofton, a world famous expert on the treatment of tuberculosis died in Edinburgh at the age of 97. John Crofton was born...

Rapidly Vanishing Pulmonary Pseudotumour

A 51-year-old male ex-smoker with a history of pulmonary tuberculosis was referred for exertional dyspnoea for 5 days. He had no fever, cough or...

Clinical Outcome and Cost Comparison Between Laparoscopic and Open Appendicectomy

Acute appendicitis is one of the most common causes of acute abdominal pain requiring surgical intervention. The traditional operation of choice was the open...

Neonatal and Paediatric Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) in a Single Asian Tertiary Centre

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a cardiopulmonary bypass technique (CPB) introduced by Bartlett in 1972, which provides life-saving support in patients with refractory yet...

Plasma IP-10 could identify early lung disease in severe COVID-19 patients

Dear Editor, The global pandemic of SARS-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has imposed tremendous strain on healthcare resources worldwide, as a significant proportion of patients require...

Outcomes of second-tier rapid response activations in a tertiary referral hospital: A prospective observational study

Despite its widespread adoption, rapid response systems (RRS) and rapid response teams (RRT) vary significantly in composition and set-up.1-3 While implementation of RRSs appear...

An Unusual Cause of Severe Pulmonary Hypertension in a Young Woman

Dear Editor, A 25-year-old Cambodian lady diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension in her native country came for second opinion on the further management of her condition....

Cognitive Aspect of Diagnostic Errors

It was an unusually busy ward round. The newly promoted registrar was keen to review the patients handed over to him. But there were...

Risk Factors for Severe Adenovirus Infection in Children during an Outbreak in Singapore

Human adenoviruses (HAdVs) are well known pathogens that cause a variety of human illnesses. They are non-enveloped, linear double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) viruses. More...

Heterogeneity of non-cystic-fibrosis bronchiectasis in multiethnic Singapore: A prospective cohort study at a tertiary pulmonology centre

Bronchiectasis is a chronic lung disease of significant morbidity and mortality. The pathological hallmarks of the disease are abnormal dilatation of airways resulting from...

Impact of pulmonary rehabilitation in patients with interstitial lung disease in Singapore

Interstitial lung diseases (ILD) encompass a heterogeneous group of lung parenchymal disorders. ILD-related symptoms impact significantly on quality of life (QoL). Dyspnoea is the...

Radiological changes on chest CT following COVID-19 infection

COVID-19 infection is associated with high rates of hospitalisation and mortality, placing healthcare systems under strain. There are many reports regarding the non-contrast-enhanced high-resolution...

The Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) Pandemic

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic began in early December in Wuhan, the 7th most populous city in Mainland China, and...

Controversies in Sepsis Management—What is the Way Forward?

Sepsis is a common and life-threatening medical condition which has high incidence and mortality rates. Health care professionals are increasingly familiar with this syndrome,...

Emergency airway management in a Singapore centre: A registry study

Emergency airways often present with little warning, and the need for airway management is necessary for a successful resuscitation. This is in contrast to...

Rapid Progression to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome: Review of Current Understanding of Critical Illness from Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Infection

In this report, we describe a patient who developed acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) with rapid clinical deterioration. Unfortunately, not much is known about...