BACKGROUND We sought to determine the association between factors that affected clini- cal pregnancy and live birth rates in patients who underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF) and received intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and/or laser assisted hatching (LAH), or neither. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this retrospective cohort study, the records of women who underwent IVF with or without IC...

INTRODUCTION Tension pneumothorax is a directly criti- cal illness condition. The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcome of tension pneumothorax treatment in trauma patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS We assessed the results of treat- ment of 22 patients hospitalized for trauma in 2000-2010, in whom at the time of admission tension pneumothorax symptoms were found. This constituted 18% of t...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology whose treatment is of limited efficiency and therefore has a high social burden. As it has been suggested that myelin destruction model, the clinical manifestation and the potential of therapeutic response in MS are correlated, it is quite justifiable that we study various factors (genetic, hormonal, environmental) that take p...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common systemic connective tissue disease. Signs of systemic inflammation include constitutional features (e.g. profound fatigue, influenza-like symptoms, fever, sweats and weight loss) and extra-articular manifestations (ExRA). The most frequent of such manifestations, the subcutaneous rheumatoid nodule, has been reported in up to one third of patients wit...

For several years we have been pursuing clini cal investigations relating to uptake of radioactive phosphorus (P32) by neoplastia and inflammatory lesions within the eye, and to the development of criteria for diagnostic interpretation and evalua tion of differential radioactive counts in normal and diseased tissues. This method of diagnostic study of eye lesions was suggested by previous ex pe...

Vibrio cholerae non-O1/non-O139 is capable of producing sporadic outbreaks of cholera-like diarrhea; however, the pathogenic mechanisms of this bacterium remain unclear. The objectives of this study were to: 1) compare the apoptosis induction and cytotoxicity between hlyA-positive and hlyA-negative strains of V. cholerae non-O1/non-O139; 2) clarify the molecular mechanisms by which these strain...

In static intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), the fundamental factors that determine the quality of a plan are the number of beams and their angles. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of beam angle optimization (BAO) on the beam number in IMRT. We used six head and neck cases to carry out the study. Basically the methodology uses a parameter called "Beam Intensit...

On October 8, 1958 the world’s first pacemaker implantation was performed at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. The system had been developed by the surgeon A ◦ ke Senning and the physician inventor Rune Elmqvist. The patient was a 43-year-old engineer suffering from Stokes-Adams syndrome. His name was Arne H.W. Larsson (Fig. 1). At the time Senning was in charge of the experimental ...

The article that follows is part of the Schizophrenia Bulletin's ongoing First Person Accounts series. We hope that mental health profession-als—the Bulletin's primary audi-ence—will take this opportunity to learn about the issues and difficulties confronted by consumers of mental health care. In addition, we hope that these accounts will give patients and families a better sense of not being a...

The Journal recognizes the influx of new antimicrobials onto the clinical scene. Our desire is to offer the reader an up-to-date, succinct, and practical appraisal of these newer antimicrobials and the clinician a resource from which to make clinical decisions as to their use in practice. The Journal welcomes suggestions from its audience concerning other antimicrobials they would like to see r...