BACKGROUND Oral leukoplakia (OL) is a common oral precancerous lesion. Cotton-swab cryotherapy (CSC) is commonly used for treating skin lesions but is rarely used for treating OL lesions. METHODS Sixty OL lesions were treated by CSC once every 2 weeks until complete regression (CR) of the lesion had been achieved. RESULTS CR was achieved in all 60 OL lesions after an average of 6.3 treatmen...

The Moore swab method was shown to be a practical and sensitive technique for the isolation of Vibrio cholerae from sewage. In each of three instances in which cholera patients lived in homes connected to municipal sewers, V. cholerae was isolated from the community sewage plant intake at the time of the patients illness. Sewer systems became negative within 1 day after patients were treated wi...

Conjunctivitis is a very common presentation to general practitioners and general paediatricians. The investigation of conjunctivitis can be a significant cost to microbiology laboratories due to the high volume of samples that can be submitted, particularly from patients in the community. The key issue is to send eye swabs in clinical situations where it can make a difference to management, an...

We compared the ligase chain reaction (LCR) assay to cell culture for diagnosis of genitourinary chlamydial infections in women using swab specimens obtained by clinicians from the endocervix and by patients from their own vaginas. Specimens from 40 (12.9%) of 309 patients were positive for chlamydial infection by culture, while the specimens of 50 (16.2%) patients were positive by LCR. Chlamyd...