Search

The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of the characteristics of a single visible tumor (Prostate Imaging-Reporting and Data System [PI-RADS]≥3) on upgrading and adverse pathology at radical prostatectomy (RP) in biopsy naïve low risk prostate cancer (PCa) patients.We retrospectively reviewed 64 biopsy naïve patients from 3 different referral centers between 2018 and 2020 with a PSA10, cT1c disease, a single PI-RADS≥ 3 index lesion in multiparametric-MRI (mp-MRI), all bearing a GG 1 tumor sampled software fusion biopsy, who underwent RP. Preoperative clinical variables including the localization, number and tumor burden of positive cores for each PI-RADS category were related to upgrading and adverse pathology (GG2 and/or pT3 and/or lymph node positive disease) at RP.Overall 37 patients (57.8%) were upgraded with a significant difference of upgrading in PI-RADS3 (30.0%) versus PI-RADS 4 (67.6%) (P = .007) and PI-RADS 4-5 (70.5%) lesions (P = .002). Thirty-three of 37 GG1 tumors were upgraded to GG2, while 6 of these 33 (18.2%) had adverse pathology as well. Overall 9 patients (14.1%) had adverse pathology at RP all harboring PI-RADS4-5 lesions. The number of positive cores differed significantly between the upgraded and nonupgraded patients. Adverse pathology group had significantly higher tumor volume at RP.PI-RADS4-5 lesions are the independent predictors of upgrading and adverse pathology in low risk PCa with visible tumors. Upgrading and adverse pathology were closely related to the number of positive combined cores reflecting the role of tumor volume. This should be kept in mind in shared decision making of an individual patient with low risk disease and a visible tumor.

Objective To compare the patients who have received 1 type of BCG strain during maintenance therapy with patients treated with multiple BCG strains. Material and Methods We reviewed 279 patients treated with BCG between January 2012 and May 2019, retrospectively. The primary endpoints of the study were recurrence-free survival (RFS) and progression-free survival (PFS) rates among patients receiving same BCG strain (Group-1) and multiple BCG strains (Group-2). Matching analysis was performed to balance the groups. The Kaplan-Meier method was used for estimating RFS and PFS. The difference between the 2 groups in terms of adverse effects was evaluated using the chi-square test. Results : A total of 225 (80.6 %) patients were treated with single BCG strain, and 54 (19.4 %) were treated with multiple BCG strains. Overall, recurrence and progression was observed in 86 (30.8%) and 38 (13.6%) patients, respectively. There was no significant difference between the 2 groups in terms of recurrence-free survival and progression-free survival on both without matching and with propensity score match analysis (log rank; P=.760 and P=.559, P=.533 and P=0509 for non-match and matched analysis respectively). Most of the patients in both groups experienced BCG therapy related side effects, but there was no statistically significant difference between groups (P=.235/.833). Conclusions Switching the BCG strain because of unavailability of the induction strain does not decrease the effectiveness of the treatment. When it is not possible to reach the starting BCG strain, treatment can be safely continued with any available strain.

Background Results from prospective trials have shown higher accuracy of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-based positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) in detection of lymph node metastasis (LNM) compared to conventional imaging. Objective To evaluate the accuracy of 68Ga-PSMA-11 PET/CT for LNM detection in patients undergoing radical prostatectomy (RP) and extended pelvic lymph node dissection (PLND). Design, setting, and participants Between June 2014 and November 2020, 96 patients with 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT for primary staging underwent RP and extended PLND. Outcome measurements and statistical analysis The results from 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT were compared with histologic data from primary PLND in 96 patients. All 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT scans were centrally reviewed. Results and limitations Of 96 patients, 15.6% (n = 15) harbored LNMs. The median prostate-specific antigen at 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT was 8.0 ng/ml (interquartile range 5.5–11.7). The majority of patients had intermediate- (52.1%) or high-risk disease (41.7%). Biopsy grade group 4 and 5 was present in 22.9% and 15.6%, respectively. The 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT scans identified eight of 15 patients (53.3%) as LN-positive (true positive). The calculated per-patient sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT in the detection of LNM were 53.3%, 98.8%, 88.9%, 92.0%, and 91.7%, respectively. The per-patient sensitivity and specificity in the detection of LNMs larger than 2 mm were 61.5% and 98.8%, respectively. The main limitation is the retrospective design of the study. Conclusions 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT is accurate in lymph node staging and the results support its use for primary staging of prostate cancer. Patient summary We compared prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-based positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) findings with histopathology results after extended lymph node dissection and showed that it is accurate in detecting lymph node metastases. Our results support the use of PSMA PET/CT for primary staging of prostate cancer.

COVID-19 was first reported as a novel pulmonary infection in December 2019 [1]. Apart from being a potentially lethal condition, COVID-19 is also affecting health care strategies for other medical conditions. Ficarra et al [2] have made suggestions regarding urological surgeries during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the authors focused on all urological pathologies and reported information from Italy, a country that seemed to be the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe [2]. Therefore, we sought to obtain an up-to-date perspective on how the routine practice patterns of expert European endourologists changed (or adapted) during the COVID-19 pandemic via a survey. By focusing on expert experience coming from the field, we aimed to provide an algorithm to guide the management of urinary stone disease during this unprecedented time of extraordinary stress on the global endourology community.

Radiation induced colitis is one the most common clinical issue for patients receiving radiotherapy. For this reason, we aimed to investigate the effect of antioxidant-effective flavonoids hesperidin and quercetin on the intestinal damage induced by radiation in this study. TNF-alpha, interleukin-10 (IL-10), heat shock protein 70 (HSP 70) and caspase 3, 8, 9 markers of apoptotic pathways were measured in the colon tissues of irradiated acute intestinal damage by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Irradiation of rats caused a significance increase of TNF-alpha, caspase 3/8/9 and decrease of IL-10 concentrations. Hesperidin and quercetin treatment resulted in decreased levels of TNF-alpha and increased levels of IL-10. Quercetin significantly decreased caspase 3/8/9 levels. Hesperidin produced a decreased of caspase 3/8/9 levels compared with irradiation group but this was statistically not significant. Only significant alteration of HSP 70 were seen in hesperidin treated rats. Further studies are needed to elucidate the mechanism by which flavonoids induced signaling provides protection against apoptosis and inflammation. © 2019

Automatic text classification is the task of organizing documents into pre-determined classes, generally using machine learning algorithms. Generally speaking, it is one of the most important methods to organize and make use of the gigantic amounts of information that exist in unstructured textual format. Text classification is a widely studied research area of language processing and text mining. In traditional text classification, a document is represented as a bag of words where the words in other words terms are cut from their finer context i.e. their location in a sentence or in a document. Only the broader context of document is used with some type of term frequency information in the vector space. Consequently, semantics of words that can be inferred from the finer context of its location in a sentence and its relations with neighboring words are usually ignored. However, meaning of words, semantic connections between words, documents and even classes are obviously important since methods that capture semantics generally reach better classification performances. Several surveys have been published to analyze diverse approaches for the traditional text classification methods. Most of these surveys cover application of different semantic term relatedness methods in text classification up to a certain degree. However, they do not specifically target semantic text classification algorithms and their advantages over the traditional text classification. In order to fill this gap, we undertake a comprehensive discussion of semantic text classification vs. traditional text classification. This survey explores the past and recent advancements in semantic text classification and attempts to organize existing approaches under five fundamental categories; domain knowledge-based approaches, corpus-based approaches, deep learning based approaches, word/character sequence enhanced approaches and linguistic enriched approaches. Furthermore, this survey highlights the advantages of semantic text classification algorithms over the traditional text classification algorithms.

In supervised learning systems; only labeled samples are used for building a classifier that is then used to predict the class labels of the unlabeled samples. However, obtaining labeled data is very expensive, time consuming and difficult in real-life practical situations as labeling a data set requires the effort of a human expert. On the other side, unlabeled data are often plentiful which makes it relatively inexpensive and easier to obtain. Semi-Supervised Learning methods strive to utilize this plentiful source of unlabeled examples to increase the learning capacity of the classifier particularly when amount of labeled examples are restricted. Since SSL techniques usually reach higher accuracy and require less human effort, they attract a substantial amount of attention both in practical applications and theoretical research. A novel semi-supervised methodology is offered in this study. This algorithm utilizes a new method to predict the class labels of unlabeled examples in a corpus and incorporate them into the training set to build a better classifier. The approach presented here depends on a meaning calculation, which computes the words’ meaning scores in the scope of classes. Meaning computation is constructed on the Helmholtz principle and utilized to various applications in the field of text mining like feature extraction, information retrieval and document summarization. Nevertheless, according to the literature, ILBOM is the first work which uses meaning calculation in a semi-supervised way to construct a semantic smoothing kernel for Support Vector Machines (SVM). Evaluation of the proposed methodology is done by performing various experiments on standard textual datasets. ILBOM's experimental results are compared with three baseline algorithms including SVM using linear kernel which is one of the most frequently used algorithms in text classification field. Experimental results show that labeling unlabeled instances based on meaning scores of words to augment the training set is valuable, and increases the classification accuracy on previously unseen test instances significantly.

The present study reports the temperature tolerance, estimated using dynamic and static methodologies, and preferred temperature range, based on oxygen consumption rate (OCR), of juvenile meagre (Argyrosomus regius) (Asso, 1801) (3.4±0.9g) after 30 days of acclimation at 18, 22, 26 and 30°C. Meagre has dynamic and static thermal tolerance zones of 551°C2 and 460°C2, respectively and is a low resistance fish species, with a resistance zone area of 87°C2. The OCR of juvenile meagre at the above acclimation temperatures was 370, 410, 618 and 642mgh-1kg-1, respectively, and is significantly different (P

Text categorization plays a crucial role in both academic and commercial platforms due to the growing demand for automatic organization of documents. Kernel-based classification algorithms such as Support Vector Machines (SVM) have become highly popular in the task of text mining. This is mainly due to their relatively high classification accuracy on several application domains as well as their ability to handle high dimensional and sparse data which is the prohibitive characteristics of textual data representation. Recently, there is an increased interest in the exploitation of background knowledge such as ontologies and corpus-based statistical knowledge in text categorization. It has been shown that, by replacing the standard kernel functions such as linear kernel with customized kernel functions which take advantage of this background knowledge, it is possible to increase the performance of SVM in the text classification domain. Based on this, we propose a novel semantic smoothing kernel for SVM. The suggested approach is based on a meaning measure, which calculates the meaningfulness of the terms in the context of classes. The documents vectors are smoothed based on these meaning values of the terms in the context of classes. Since we efficiently make use of the class information in the smoothing process, it can be considered a supervised smoothing kernel. The meaning measure is based on the Helmholtz principle from Gestalt theory and has previously been applied to several text mining applications such as document summarization and feature extraction. However, to the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study to use meaning measure in a supervised setting to build a semantic kernel for SVM. We evaluated the proposed approach by conducting a large number of experiments on well-known textual datasets and present results with respect to different experimental conditions. We compare our results with traditional kernels used in SVM such as linear kernel as well as with several corpus-based semantic kernels. Our results show that classification performance of the proposed approach outperforms other kernels. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

ResumoJustificativa e objetivosInvestigar os efeitos da manutenção de sevoflurano, desflurano e propofol sobre nos níveis séricos de selênio, cobre, zinco, ferro e malondialdeído, as mensurações de glutationa peroxidase e a capacidade antioxidante.MétodosForam alocados em três grupos 60 pacientes agendados para cirurgia unilateral de membros inferiores, feita com torniquete sob anestesia geral. Amostras de sangue foram coletadas para determinar os níveis séricos basais de selênio, cobre, zinco, ferro, malondialdeído e glutationa peroxidase. A anestesia foi induzida com 2‐2,5mgkg−1 de propofol, 1mgkg−1 de lidocaína e 0,6mgkg−1 de rocurônio. Na manutenção da anestesia, sob gás de transporte de 50% O2 e 50% N2O (4Lmin−1), sevoflurano a 1CAM foi administrado ao Grupo S e desflurano a 1CAM ao Grupo D e, sob gás de transporte em mistura de 50% O2 e 50% ar (4Lmin−1), 6mgkgh−1 de propofol e 1mgkgh−1 de fentanil foram administrados ao Grupo P. No pós‐operatório, amostras de sangue foram novamente coletadas.ResultadosApenas nos grupos S e P os níveis de MDA diminuíram em 48 horas de pós‐operatório; os níveis de glutationa peroxidase aumentaram em comparação com os valores basais. Os níveis de selênio diminuíram no Grupo S e no Grupo P, os níveis de zinco diminuíram no Grupo P, os níveis de ferro diminuíram em todos os grupos e não houve alteração nos níveis de cobre em nenhum grupo no período pós‐operatório.ConclusãoDe acordo com os marcadores de malondialdeído e glutationa peroxidase, concluímos que a manutenção da anestesia geral com propofol e sevoflurano ativou o sistema antioxidante contra o estresse oxidativo e o uso de desflurano não teve efeitos sobre o estresse oxidativo e o sistema antioxidante.AbstractBackground and objectivesIn this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of sevoflurane, desflurane and propofol maintenances on serum levels of selenium, copper, zinc, iron, malondialdehyde, and glutathion peroxidase measurements, and antioxidant capacity.Methods60 patients scheduled for unilateral lower extremity surgery which would be performed with tourniquet under general anesthesia were divided into three groups. Blood samples were collected to determine the baseline serum levels of selenium, copper, zinc, iron, malondialdehyde and glutathion peroxidase. Anesthesia was induced using 2–2.5mgkg−1 propofol, 1mgkg−1 lidocaine and 0.6mgkg−1 rocuronium. In the maintenance of anesthesia, under carrier gas of 50:50% O2:N2O 4Lmin−1, 1 MAC sevoflorane was administered to Group S and 1 MAC desflurane to Group D; and under carrier gas of 50:50% O2:air 4Lmin−1 6mgkgh−1 propofol and 1μgkgh−1 fentanyl infusion were administered to Group P. At postoperative blood specimens were collected again.ResultsIt was observed that only in Group S and P, levels of MDA decreased at postoperative 48th hour; levels of glutathion peroxidase increased in comparison to the baseline values. Selenium levels decreased in Group S and Group P, zinc levels decreased in Group P, and iron levels decreased in all three groups, and copper levels did not change in any groups in the postoperative period.ConclusionAccording to the markers of malondialdehyde and glutathion peroxidase, it was concluded that maintenance of general anesthesia using propofol and sevoflurane activated the antioxidant system against oxidative stress and using desflurane had no effects on oxidative stress and antioxidant system.

ResumenJustificación y objetivosInvestigar los efectos del mantenimiento de sevoflurano, desflurano y propofol sobre los niveles séricos de selenio, cobre, cinc, hierro y malondialdehído, las medidas de glutatión peroxidasa y la capacidad antioxidante.MétodosFueron ubicados en 3 grupos 60 pacientes programados para cirugía unilateral de miembros inferiores, realizada con torniquete bajo anestesia general. Fueron recogidas muestras de sangre para determinar los niveles séricos basales de selenio, cobre, cinc, hierro, malondialdehído y glutatión peroxidasa. La anestesia fue inducida con 2-2,5mg/kg−1 de propofol, 1mg/kg−1 de lidocaína y 0,6mg/kg−1 de rocuronio. En el mantenimiento de la anestesia, bajo gas portador de 50% de O2 y 50% de N2O (4L/min−1), sevoflurano a 1CAM fue administrado al grupo S; y desflurano a 1CAM al grupo D y bajo gas portador en mezcla de 50% O2 y 50% aire (4L/min−1), 6mg/kg/h−1 de propofol y 1μg/kg/h−1 de fentanilo fueron administrados al grupo P. En el postoperatorio se recogieron de nuevo muestras de sangre.ResultadosSolamente en los grupos S y P los niveles de malondialdehído disminuyeron en las 48h del postoperatorio; los niveles de glutatión peroxidasa aumentaron en comparación con los valores basales. Los niveles de selenio disminuyeron en el grupo S y en el grupo P, los niveles de cinc disminuyeron en el grupo P, los de hierro disminuyeron en todos los grupos y no hubo alteración en los niveles de cobre en ningún grupo en el período postoperatorio.ConclusiónDe acuerdo con los marcadores de malondialdehído y glutatión peroxidasa, llegamos a la conclusión de que el mantenimiento de la anestesia general con propofol y sevoflurano activó el sistema antioxidante contra el estrés oxidativo y el uso de desflurano no tuvo efectos sobre el estrés oxidativo y el sistema antioxidante.AbstractBackground and objectivesIn this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of sevoflurane, desflurane and propofol maintenances on serum levels of selenium, copper, zinc, iron, malondialdehyde, and glutathion peroxidase measurements, and antioxidant capacity.Methods60 patients scheduled for unilateral lower extremity surgery which would be performed with tourniquet under general anesthesia were divided into three groups. Blood samples were collected to determine the baseline serum levels of selenium, copper, zinc, iron, malondialdehyde and glutathion peroxidase. Anesthesia was induced using 2-2.5mg/kg−1 propofol, 1mg/kg−1 lidocaine and 0.6mg/kg−1 rocuronium. In the maintenance of anesthesia, under carrier gas of 50:50% O2:N2O 4L/min−1, 1MAC sevoflorane was administered to group S and 1MAC desflurane to group D; and under carrier gas of 50:50% O2:air 4L/min−1 6mg/kg/h−1 propofol and 1μg/kg/h−1 fentanyl infusion were administered to group P. At postoperative blood specimens were collected again.ResultsIt was observed that only in group S and P, levels of malondialdehyde decreased at postoperative 48th hour; levels of glutathion peroxidase increased in comparison to the baseline values. Selenium levels decreased in group S and group P, zinc levels decreased in group P, and iron levels decreased in all three groups, and copper levels did not change in any groups in the postoperative period.ConclusionAccording to the markers of malondialdehyde and glutathion peroxidase, it was concluded that maintenance of general anesthesia using propofol and sevoflurane activated the antioxidant system against oxidative stress and using desflurane had no effects on oxidative stress and antioxidant system.

We aimed to determine the oxidative stress and antioxidant status in preeclamptic placenta. Also, we investigated the apoptotic index of villous trophoblast and proliferation index of cytotrophoblasts. The study included 32 pregnant with preeclampsia and 31 normotensive healthy pregnant women. Malondialdehyde (MDA) and total antioxidant status (TAS) levels were measured in the placenta. For detection of apoptosis and proliferation in trophoblast, apoptosis protease activating factor 1 (APAF-1) and Ki-67 were used. Placental MDA levels in preeclamptic women were significantly higher than normal pregnancies (. p=. 0.002). There was no significant difference between the groups in the TAS levels of placenta (. p=. 0.773). Also, the apoptotic index in villous trophoblasts increased (. p

Ammonia tolerance of European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) juveniles (1.1 ± 0.3 g) was investigated by a series of acute toxicity experiments at different salinity levels (10, 20 and 30 ppt) at pH 8.0 and temperature 22 °C. Oxygen consumption rates were also measured to determine the Standard Metabolism (SM) of the fish. The tolerance of the fish to total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) and unionized ammonia (NH3) increased significantly with increasing salinity levels. The safe level for European sea bass was estimated to be 0.4, 1.0 and 1.6 mg L−1 for TAN and 0.02, 0.04 and 0.07 mg L−1 for NH3 at 10, 20 and 30 ppt salinity levels, respectively. At any, each level, the SM of the fish increased with increasing TAN concentration (P

Graph analysis by data visualization involves achieving a series of topology-based tasks. When the graph data belongs to a data domain that contains multiple node and link types, as in the case of semantic graphs, topology-based tasks become more challenging. To reduce visual complexity in semantic graphs, we propose an approach which is based on applying relational operations such as selecting and joining nodes of different types. We use node aggregation to reflect the relational operations to the graph. We introduce glyphs for representing aggregated nodes. Using glyphs lets us encode connectivity information of multiple nodes with a single glyph. We also use visual parameters of the glyph to encode node attributes or type specific information. Rather than doing the operations in the data abstraction layer and presenting the user with the resulting visualization, we propose an interactive approach where the user can iteratively apply the relational operations directly on the visualization. We present the efficiency of our method by the results of a usability study that includes a case study on a subset of the International Movie Database. The results of the controlled experiment in our usability study indicate a statistically significant contribution in reducing the completion time of the evaluation tasks.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of malignancy and the impact of nephrotoxic drugs used in bone marrow transplantation (BMT) on the circulating levels of cystatin C in leukemia. Methods: We studied nineteen patients (eleven men and eight women; mean age 30.1 ± 11.2, 27.9 ± 7.1 years) with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia and chronic myeloid leukemia. Cystatin C, urea, creatinine and creatinine clearance (CrCl) were measured 24 h before BMT, 1 week after BMT, 2 weeks after BMT and 3 weeks after BMT. The control group consisted of twenty healthy adults, and the mean age was 29.1 ± 8.9. Results: At the pretransplantation period, values of cystatin C were significantly higher than in the control group (P < 0.05). Urea, creatinine and CrCl values were not statistically different from the controls. One week after BMT, the level of cystatin C was significantly low as compared to the levels measured 24 h before BMT, but was still significantly higher than the controls (P < 0.05), whereas the levels of urea, creatinine and CrCl were in accordance with the levels of the controls. Two and three weeks after BMT, cystatin C values maintained the significant increase (P < 0.05), whereas the values of urea, creatinine and CrCl still corresponded with those of the controls in both group. Conclusions: Our preliminary data expose that cystatin C is not a reliable GFR marker in patients during leukemia or for monitoring nephrotoxic drugs used in BMT, but we can not reach definitive conclusion due to no gold standard for comparing the diagnostic accuracy of cystatin C. Further study is needed to elucidate the precise mechanism underlying this observation. © 2005 The Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists. All rights reserved.

Not all clinical laboratories have an osmometer, and calculations for osmolality are a frequently used method for determining osmolality. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of four formulas for the estimation of osmolality, with cryoscopic measurement as the reference standard in intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) and head injury (HI) patients who were not treated with mannitol. Forty HI and 31 ICH patients treated in the Neurosurgery Department were included in the study. Every 6 h over a period of 24 h, serum samples were collected from patients and osmolality was measured. In conclusion, our study shows that only formulas F1 [Osmolality = 1.86(Na) + 1.86(K) + Glucose + Urea] and F4 [Osmolality = 1.86(Na) + Glucose + Urea + Ethanol + 9] can be used to evaluate osmolality in ICH patients who were not treated with mannitol. In HI patients, none of the formulas should be used to calculate osmolality. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.