BACKGROUND The utility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis direct nucleic acid amplification testing (MTD) for pulmonary tuberculosis disease diagnosis in the United States has not been well described. METHODS We analyzed a retrospective cohort of reported patients with suspected active pulmonary tuberculosis in 2008-2010 from Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, and Massachusetts to assess MTD use, effectiv...

introduction: vertical root fracture (vrf) is common in endodontically treated teeth. conventional and digital radiographies have limitations for detection of vrfs. cone-beam computed tomography (cbct) offers greater detection accuracy of vrfs in comparison with conventional radiography. this study compared the effects of metal artifacts on detection of vrfs by using two cbct systems. methods a...

OBJECTIVE To assess the accuracy in the prediction of both early and late preeclampsia by flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery (FMD), a biophysical marker for endothelial dysfunction. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 91 patients, considered at high risk for development of preeclampsia were submitted to brachial artery FMD between 24 and 28 weeks of gestation. RESULTS Nineteen out o...

OBJECTIVES To assess the validity of the vertical tube-shift method using intraoral periapical radiography (IOPAR) for determining the relationship between the mandibular third molar roots and the inferior alveolar nerve (IAN) canal in comparison with cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). MATERIALS AND METHODS Fifty impacted mandibular third molars were analyzed using the IOPAR vertical tube-...

PURPOSE To evaluate the accuracy of sonographic endometrial thickness and hysteroscopic characteristics in predicting malignancy in postmenopausal women undergoing surgical resection of endometrial polyps. METHODS Five hundred twenty-one (521) postmenopausal women undergoing hysteroscopic resection of endometrial polyps between January 1998 and December 2008 were studied. For each value of so...

UNLABELLED INTRODUCTION Acute appendicitis (AA) is common surgical problem associated with acute-phase reaction. Blood tests role in decision-making process is unclear. This retrospective study aimed to determine diagnostic value of preoperative evaluation of white blood cells (WBCs) and neutrophils and its value in predicting AA severity. METHODS Medical records of 456 patients who underw...

Numerous studies have analyzed the influences of word segmentation (WS) performance on information retrieval (IR) for Mandarin Chinese and have demonstrated a non-monotonic relationship between WS accuracy and IR effectiveness. The usefulness of the compound words that have been a focus of the IR literature is not reflected by common WS evaluation metrics of word-based precision (P) and recall ...

conclusion we conclude that coronary calcium scoring provided useful information in the management of patients. in cacs less than 100, it has a npv of 87% in excluding significant stenosis in patients with the risk of cad but it does not have enough diagnostic accuracy for surely excluding coronary stenosis, so we should perform a combination of cacs and coronary ct angiography for patients. re...

background: physical examination (pe) and breast mri are two of the current methods which have usually used in diagnosis of primary breast cancer. their accuracy in detection of: either complete response or presence of residual tumor, however, has not yet been established in patients who have been received neoadjuvant chemotherapy (nac). the purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic ...

PURPOSE To evaluate the diagnosis improvement of EUS-FNA when using ROSE performed by the endosonographer. METHODS A retrospective study was conducted. A total of 48 pancreatic solid masses EUS-FNA were divided into two groups according to the availability of on-site cytology (ROSE) - the first 24 patients (group A-without ROSE) and the latter 24 cases (group B-with ROSE). Sensitivity, specif...