Objective
To assess the ability of power Doppler ultrasonography (PDU) to detect acute pyelonephritis and to compare the findings from PDU with those from enhanced computed tomography (CT).
Patients and methods
Eleven patients (mean age 18.5 years, range 5–37) admitted to hospital with a clinical diagnosis of pyelonephritis were assessed with PDU and enhanced CT, the latter providing the reference method.
Results
The imaging studies showed normal findings in three patients; a single focus of pyelonephritis was detected by CT in six, whereas a matching defect was detected on PDU in five, with PDU failing to detect an infective focus in one. Multifocal diffuse pyelonephritis was diagnosed correctly by enhanced CT and PDU in two patients.
Conclusion
Power Doppler ultrasonography had an overall sensitivity of 88% and complete specificity in the evaluation of patients with acute pyelonephritis.
Objective
To determine the role of transrectal power Doppler ultrasonography (PDU) in the diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Patients and methods
Thirty‐six patients (mean age 66.4 years, sd 7.7, range 59–82) with possible prostate cancer, suspected from an abnormal digital rectal examination or elevated prostate specific antigen level, underwent transrectal ultrasonography, transrectal PDU and biopsy. The vascularity on PDU was graded on a scale of 0–2, where grade 1–2 was considered positive and grade 0 negative.
Results
The vascularity was grade 2 in 11 patients, grade 1 in 11 and grade 0 in 14; 20 of the 36 (56%) patients had prostate cancer. Of the 22 patients positive on PDU, 18 had malignant disease and four benign; two of 20 patients with histopathologically confirmed malignancy had a normal PDU. The sensitivity of PDU was 90%, the specificity 75% and the positive predictive value 82%.
Conclusion
Focal hypervascularity on PDU was associated with an increased likelihood of prostate cancer. Although ultrasonography alone cannot detect all cancers, even using PDU, the technique appears to increase the sensitivity and to help identify appropriate sites for biopsy.
Although the stuck-at fault model is the standard fault model, the frequently occurring faults in some technologies are unintentional shorts, denoted as bridging faults. We outline a method that utilizes the information from the stuck-at fault model to accurately diagnose the bridging faults that affect two lines. The proposed method exploits the observation that the bridging fault response matches the stuck-at fault responses on the shorted lines for the failing test vectors and generates a candidate list that accounts for all failures. A further reduction in the size of the candidate set is achieved by extracting information from the test vectors that do not fail. The proposed method uses no layout information whatsoever. Nonetheless, the experimental results indicate that the bridging faults can be accurately diagnosed delivering a reduction in the sizes of the ambiguity sets and full capture of the offending bridging fault.
Objective: To evaluate postoperative outcomes and complications of transobturator tape (TOT) procedure in the treatment of patients with mixed urinary incontinence (MUI). Materials and methods: We analyzed 193 consecutive female patients who underwent TOT procedure. Among these patients 75 women with MUI were the subjects of this study. All patients were evaluated with the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Short form (ICIQ-SF) preoperatively and at the postoperative follow-up visits. Patient satisfaction was evaluated with Visual analog scale. On the postoperative 15th day, all patients were routinely evaluated with urine culture and possible early postoperative complications were examined. Patients were evaluated on the postoperative 3rd, 12th months and annually with pelvic examination, VAS, cough stress test (CST) and ICIQ-SF. Surgical outcomes were evaluated and data of subjective and objective cure rates, any complications related to the procedure were registered. Statistical analyses were performed with SPSS 17.0 (SPSS version 17.0, Chicago, IL, USA). Results: A total of 67 women who met the requirements for inclusion and who had available records for analysis were included in the study. Objective cure, subjective cure and patient satisfaction rates were 89.6, 53.7 and 70.1% respectively. The mean score for 29 patients with a postoperative 5th year ICIQ-SF score >0 was 12.2 (SD ± 4.2). Of the 67 patients, the urgency urinary incontinence (UUI) component of 12 patients (17.9%) had improved postoperatively. Fifty-five (82%) patients with persistent UUI postoperatively were treated with antimuscarinic drugs. None of our patients experienced intraoperative complications. Two (3%) patients required re-operation for recurrent stress urinary incontinence (SUI) in the follow-up. Conclusion: TOT procedure is successful for surgical treatment of MUI with predominant SUI in long-term follow-up. The operation was satisfactory for the most of the women. Persistence of UUI was the main reason for dissatisfaction.
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