Although there is growing evidence of the efficacy and safety of prostatic arterial embolization for benign prostatic hyperplasia, this systematic review using meta-analysis and meta-regression showed that prostatic arterial embolization should still be considered an experimental treatment modality.

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This paper proposes an approximation algorithm for estimating the queue length (the number of customers in the system) distributions of time-varying non-Markovian many-server queues (e.g., G t /G t /n t queues), with large n t values. The algorithm uses phase-type distributions to approximate inter-arrival/service times and apply fluid and diffusion approximations developed for Markovian systems. We develop an alternative model in order to bypass the lingering problem in the diffusion model. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

I n this paper, we consider time-varying multiserver queues with abandonment and retrials. For their performance analysis, fluid and diffusion limits utilizing strong approximations have been widely used in the literature. Although those limits are asymptotically exact, they may not accurately approximate performance of multiserver queues even if the number of servers is large. To address that concern, this paper focuses on developing a methodology by taking fluid and diffusion limits in a nontraditional fashion. We show that our approximation is significantly more accurate and also asymptotically true. We illustrate the effectiveness of our methodology by performing several numerical experiments.

BackgroundSmartphone-based assessment may be a useful diagnostic and monitoring tool for patients. There have been many attempts to create a smartphone diagnostic tool for clinical use in various medical fields but few have demonstrated scientific validity.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to develop a smartphone application of the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) and to demonstrate its validity and reliability.MethodsFrom June 2012 to May 2013, a total of 1581 male participants (≥40 years old), with or without lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), visited our urology clinic via the health improvement center at Soonchunhyang University Hospital (Republic of Korea) and were enrolled in this study. A randomized repeated measures crossover design was employed using a smartphone application of the IPSS and the conventional paper form of the IPSS. Paired t test under a hypothesis of non-inferior trial was conducted. For the reliability test, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was measured.ResultsThe total score of the IPSS (P=.289) and each item of the IPSS (P=.157-1.000) showed no differences between the paper version and the smartphone version of the IPSS. The mild, moderate, and severe LUTS groups showed no differences between the two versions of the IPSS. A significant correlation was noted in the total group (ICC=.935, P<.001). The mild, moderate, and severe LUTS groups also showed significant correlations (ICC=.616, .549, and .548 respectively, all P<.001).There was selection bias in this study, as only participants who had smartphones could participate.ConclusionsThe validity and reliability of the smartphone application version were comparable to the conventional paper version of the IPSS. The smartphone application of the IPSS could be an effective method for measuring lower urinary tract symptoms.