BACKGROUND AND AIMS Endoscopic real-time imaging of Barrett's esophagus (BE) with advanced imaging technologies enables targeted biopsies and may eliminate the need for random biopsies to detect dysplasia during endoscopic surveillance of BE. This systematic review and meta-analysis was performed by the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) Technology Committee to specifically ...

Normalized pulse volume (NPV) derived from the ear has the potential to be a practical index for monitoring daily life stress. However, ear NPV has not yet been validated. Therefore, we compared NPV derived from an index finger using transmission photoplethysmography as a reference, with NPV derived from a middle finger and four sites of the ear using reflection photoplethysmography during base...

BACKGROUND STRATIFY is a prediction tool developed for use in for hospital inpatients, using a 0-5 score to predict patients who will fall. It has been widely used as part of hospital fall prevention plans, but it is not clear how good its operational utility is in a variety of settings. OBJECTIVES (i) to describe the predictive validity of STRATIFY for identifying hospital inpatients who wil...

The accuracy of conization for the prediction of radical hysterectomy (RH) pathological variables in patients with stage Ia2 to Ib1 (≤2 cm) cervical cancer was retrospectively evaluated in the present study. Endocervical or deep resection margin (RM) involvement in the conization specimens was found to be independently associated with residual disease in the hysterectomy specimens (P < 0.001, =...

High-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) testing has a higher sensitivity but lower specificity than cytology for detection of high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). To avoid over-referral to colposcopy and overtreatment, hrHPV-positive women require triage testing and/or followup. A total of 25,658 women (30-60 years) enrolled in a population-based cohort study had an adequate baseline Pap ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the validity of the International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes for identifying patients with dyslipidemia in electronic medical record (EMR) data. METHODS The EMRs of patients receiving primary care in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador (NL), Canada, were retrieved from the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network database. International Classificati...

Traditional valuation tools do not adequately support management’s decisions because they ignore the benefits of managers’ flexibility and future opportunities. A new technique for evaluating strategic investment decisions is the real options approach, which is capable of including the value of active management and strategic opportunities under uncertainty. This paper applies real options tech...

Impaired intestinal calcium absorption contributes to osteoporosis, but its measurement is limited to research settings. We hypothesized that 24-hour urine calcium (24HUC) values could diagnose low fractional calcium absorption (FCA). We performed a post hoc analysis of clinical trial data to determine whether 24HUC predicted low FCA compared with the gold standard dual calcium isotope method. ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the diagnostic utility of interferon-γ release assay (T-SPOT.TB) for the differential diagnosis between Crohn's disease (CD) and intestinal tuberculosis (ITB). METHODS A total of 103 CD and 88 ITB patients, confirmed by histology and anti-tuberculosis treatment response from 2003 to 2011, were included. Their characteristics and clinical features were recorded. Mycobacte...