background cryptosporidium spp. is a widespread protozoan parasite involving humans and animals. objectives this study was carried out to evaluate the immunofluorescence assay (ifa) and pcr results for more accurate diagnosis of faecal specimens. patients and methods forty six faecal human specimens of cryptosporidium oocysts were examined by pcr and ifa in calgary, canada. in statistical analy...

Objectives To study positive (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of positron emission tomography with computed tomography (PET-CT) scans in determining malignancy in skull base lesions and perform a systematic literature review for optimal PET-CT interpretation. Design Retrospective case series and systematic literature review of the current English literature. Setting Tertiary referral a...

AIM To assess magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and faecal calprotectin to detect endoscopic postoperative recurrence in patients with Crohn's disease (CD). METHODS From two tertiary centers, all patients with CD who underwent ileocolonic resection were consecutively and prospectively included. All the patients underwent MRI and endoscopy within the first year after surgery or after the restor...

background in 1996, donovan and colleagues represented a scoring system for better prediction of hirschsprung disease (hd). objectives our objective was to devise another scoring system that uses a checklist of radiologic and clinical signs to determine the probability of hd in suspicious patients. patients and methods in a diagnostic accuracy study, 55 children with clinical manifestations of ...

OBJECTIVES This study was conducted to evaluate the clinical value of computed tomographic (CT) angiography for diagnosis and therapeutic planning in patients with pulmonary sequestration. METHODS Forty-three patients with suspected pulmonary sequestration underwent CT angiography before undergoing digital subtraction angiography or surgery. For each patient, CT angiography was used to determ...

BACKGROUND Metastasis is a crucial endpoint for patients with prostate cancer (PCa), but currently lacks a validated claims-based algorithm for detection. OBJECTIVE To develop an algorithm using ICD-9 codes to facilitate accurate reporting of PCa metastases. METHODS Medical records from 300 men hospitalized at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital for PCa were reviewed. Using the presence...

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to assess the performance and value of breast ultrasound in women with familial risk of breast cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS From an initial dataset of 245 women with positive family history who had breast cancer surveillance utilising mammography or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between November 1994 and February 2001, 179 subjects with follow-up dat...

Introduction: Necrotising fasciitis (NF) is a rapidly progressive infection of the subcutaneous tissue and fascia which spreads rapidly. The scoring system of Laboratory Risk Indicator for Necrotising Fasciitis (LRINEC) developed by Wong et al has been proposed as a tool for distinguishing NF and other soft tissue infections (STI) in Singapore. We set out to establish whether the LRINEC score i...

BACKGROUND Breast cancer is very common and highly fatal in women. Current non-invasive detection methods like mammograms are unsatisfactory. Lipidomics, a promising detection method, may serve as a novel prognostic approach for breast cancer in high-risk patients. RESULTS According the predictive model, the combination of 15 lipid species had high diagnostic value. In the training set, sensi...

RATIONALE Chest radiography is sometimes the only method available for investigating patients with possible pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) with negative sputum smears. However, interpretation of chest radiographs in this context lacks specificity for PTB, is subjective and is neither standardized nor reproducible. Efforts to improve the interpretation of chest radiography are warranted. OBJECTI...