Most patients with first-time kidney stones undergo limited evaluations, and few receive preventive therapy. A prediction tool for the risk of a second kidney stone episode is needed to optimize treatment strategies. We identified adult first-time symptomatic stone formers residing in Olmsted County, Minnesota, from 1984 to 2003 and manually reviewed their linked comprehensive medical records t...

Purpose This study aims to assess the predictive factors and treatment outcomes of Steinstrasse formation following shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) for ureter stone. Materials and Methods The medical records of 1,418 ureter stone patients who underwent one-session SWL from November 2005 to May 2013 at our medical institute were retrospectively reviewed. Finally, 551 patients met inclusion criter...

PURPOSE The aim of our study was to evaluate the association of several factors with spontaneous stone expulsion, including ureteral stone characteristics (size, location, hydronephrosis, perinephric stranding), types of medications prescribed (α-blocker, low-dose steroid), and other possible demographic and health-history factors (gender, age, serum creatinine, underlying diabetes mellitus [DM...

PURPOSE Ultrasonic lithotriptors are commonly used to fragment and remove stones during percutaneous nephrolithotomy. To date a comparative assessment of current units has not been accomplished without potential operator bias. An objective testing environment is required for optimal appraisal of the efficiency of ultrasonic lithotriptors. MATERIALS AND METHODS An in vitro test system was devi...

A new conodont species, Icriodus marieae, is described from pelagic limestone beds of the Carnic Alps (Austria). Specimens are obtained from the upper part of the Valentin Formation (Central Carnic Alps) and range from the latest Eifelian to middle Givetian. Significantly differing from other icriodontid conodonts is that the icriodontan element of the new species develops only three denticles ...

Mixed-initiative artificial intelligence systems are ones where the system can take the initiative to solicit further input from the user or where the user can take the initiative to interrupt the processing of the system to provide additional input (see (Haller, McRoy, ~ Kobsa 1999), (Cox 1999)). Mixed-initiative systems contrast with other AI systems which perform automated reasoning given in...

introduction: to compare outcomes of retrograde intrarenal surgery (rirs) with extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (eswl) as treatment of choice. methods: a total number of 46 patients with renal pelvic stones 10-20 mm and body mass index (bmi) >30 randomized in two groups underwent rirs and eswl from 2011 to 2014 and followed for 3 months. results: the patients mean ± sd age was 36.1 ± 13.1 ...

silicon dioxide or silica is the earth’s most abundant mineral. the primary pulmonary illness attributable to silica exposure is silicosis, which is observed in three forms: classic, accelerated and acute. a case of silicosis is presented in this article who has been working in a stone-cutting plant. he had suffered from symptoms of silicosis one year after employment in this plant (acute form)...

A stepping-stone connection has always been assumed as an intrusion since the first research on stepping-stone connections twenty years ago. However, not all stepping-stone connections are malicious. This paper proposes an enhanced stepping-stone detection (SSD) technique which is capable to identify legitimate connections from stepping-stone connections. Stepping-stone connections are identifi...