Human noroviruses are a group of viral agents that afflict people of all age groups. The viruses are now recognized as the most common causative agent of nonbacterial acute gastroenteritis and foodborne viral illness worldwide. However, they have been considered to play insignificant roles in the disease burden of acute gastroenteritis for the past decades until the recent advent of new and mor...

objective: the aim of the present study was to compare the performance of laser fluorescence (lf) method with other conventional diagnostic techniques in detection of small occlusal caries in permanent teeth. materials and methods: prior to this in vitro diagnostic study, a pilot study assessed intra- examiner reliability and reproducibility. the occlusal surfaces of 90 extracted human premolar...

INTRODUCTION Medical diagnostic tests are evaluated based on measures of sensitivity (Sn), specificity (Sp), and likelihood ratios (LR). These procedures are limited in the event of a biased gold standard or missing data. Interpretations of these measures are frequently inappropriate. PURPOSE The Rasch measurement model (RMM) was examined as a method to provide evidence of diagnostic test uti...

BACKGROUND Diagnosis of leptospirosis by the microscopic agglutination test (MAT) or by culture is confined to specialized laboratories. Although ELISA techniques are more common, they still require laboratory facilities. Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs) can be used for easy point-of-care diagnosis. This study aims to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the RDTs LeptoTek Dri Dot, LeptoTek Later...

OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to perform a meta-analysis to evaluate the diagnostic performance of low-dose CT for the diagnosis of urolithiasis (seven studies, 1,061 patients). MATERIALS AND METHODS The medical literature from 1995 to 2007 was searched using PubMed, Medline, and Cochrane Library databases for articles on studies that used low-dose CT (< 3 mSv dose applied for the ...

Medical Radiology Diagnostic Imaging is a unique series that aims to document the most innovative technologies in all fields within diagnostic imaging and interventional radiology, thereby informing the physician in practice of the latest advances in diagnostic imaging and percutaneous image-guided minimally invasive procedures. The contents are intended to cover all organs, and all modern ima...

Introduction: Pleural effusion may develop during various acute or chronic medical conditions. Despite different diagnostic workups, some cases of pleural effusion may remain undiagnosed. Pleuroscopy and closed biopsy are common diagnostic approaches used for the diagnosis of undiagnosed cases. The present research aimed to evaluate the diagnostic yield of medical pleuroscopy a...

....................................................................................................... xii 1 Background ........................................................................................... 16 1.1 Systematic reviews .......................................................................... 16 1.2 The systematic review protocol ................................................