Displaying publications 181 - 200 of 9653 in total

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  1. Tan SK, Yeong CH, Raja Aman RRA, Ng KH, Abdul Aziz YF, Chee KH, et al.
    Br J Radiol, 2018 Jul;91(1088):20170874.
    PMID: 29493261 DOI: 10.1259/bjr.20170874
    OBJECTIVE: This study aimed (1) to perform a systematic review on scanning parameters and contrast medium (CM) reduction methods used in prospectively electrocardiography (ECG-triggered low tube voltage coronary CT angiography (CCTA), (2) to compare the achievable dose reduction and image quality and (3) to propose appropriate scanning techniques and CM administration methods.

    METHODS: A systematic search was performed in PubMed, the Cochrane library, CINAHL, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Scopus, where 20 studies were selected for analysis of scanning parameters and CM reduction methods.

    RESULTS: The mean effective dose (HE) ranged from 0.31 to 2.75 mSv at 80 kVp, 0.69 to 6.29 mSv at 100 kVp and 1.53 to 10.7 mSv at 120 kVp. Radiation dose reductions of 38 to 83% at 80 kVp and 3 to 80% at 100 kVp could be achieved with preserved image quality. Similar vessel contrast enhancement to 120 kVp could be obtained by applying iodine delivery rate (IDR) of 1.35 to 1.45 g s-1 with total iodine dose (TID) of between 10.9 and 16.2 g at 80 kVp and IDR of 1.08 to 1.70 g s-1 with TID of between 18.9 and 20.9 g at 100 kVp.

    CONCLUSION: This systematic review found that radiation doses could be reduced to a rate of 38 to 83% at 80 kVp, and 3 to 80% at 100 kVp without compromising the image quality. Advances in knowledge: The suggested appropriate scanning parameters and CM reduction methods can be used to help users in achieving diagnostic image quality with reduced radiation dose.

    Matched MeSH terms: Coronary Angiography/methods*; Computed Tomography Angiography/methods*
  2. Sidhu A, Murgahayah T, Narayanan V, Chandran H, Waran V
    J Acupunct Meridian Stud, 2017 Jan;10(1):45-48.
    PMID: 28254101 DOI: 10.1016/j.jams.2016.06.005
    Although acupuncture has existed for over 2000 years, its application as an anesthetic aid began in the 1950s in China. The first surgical procedure performed under acupuncture anesthesia was a tonsillectomy. Soon thereafter, major and minor surgical procedures took place with electroacupuncture alone providing the anesthesia. The procedures performed were diverse, ranging from cardiothoracic surgery to dental extractions. Usage of acupuncture anesthesia, specifically in neurosurgery, has been well documented in hospitals across China, especially in Beijing, dating back to the 1970s. We present a case of a 65-year-old man who presented with right-sided body weakness. He had a past medical history of uncontrolled diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and obstructive sleep apnea requiring use of a nasal continuous positive airway pressure device during sleep. We performed a computed tomography brain scan, which revealed a left-sided acute on chronic subdural hemorrhage. Due to his multiple comorbidities, we decided to perform the surgical procedure under electroacupuncture anesthesia. The aim of this case report is to describe a craniotomy performed under electroacupuncture on an elderly patient with multiple comorbidities who was awake during the procedure and in whom this procedure, if it had been performed under general anesthesia, would have carried high risk.
    Matched MeSH terms: Craniotomy/methods*; Electroacupuncture/methods*
  3. Kamaludin H, Mahdin H, Abawajy JH
    PLoS One, 2018;13(3):e0193951.
    PMID: 29565982 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193951
    Although Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is poised to displace barcodes, security vulnerabilities pose serious challenges for global adoption of the RFID technology. Specifically, RFID tags are prone to basic cloning and counterfeiting security attacks. A successful cloning of the RFID tags in many commercial applications can lead to many serious problems such as financial losses, brand damage, safety and health of the public. With many industries such as pharmaceutical and businesses deploying RFID technology with a variety of products, it is important to tackle RFID tag cloning problem and improve the resistance of the RFID systems. To this end, we propose an approach for detecting cloned RFID tags in RFID systems with high detection accuracy and minimal overhead thus overcoming practical challenges in existing approaches. The proposed approach is based on consistency of dual hash collisions and modified count-min sketch vector. We evaluated the proposed approach through extensive experiments and compared it with existing baseline approaches in terms of execution time and detection accuracy under varying RFID tag cloning ratio. The results of the experiments show that the proposed approach outperforms the baseline approaches in cloned RFID tag detection accuracy.
    Matched MeSH terms: Automatic Data Processing/methods; Radio Frequency Identification Device/methods*
  4. Abdul Rashid AM, Md Noh MSF, Yusof Khan AHK, Loh WC, Baharin J, Ibrahim A, et al.
    BMC Neurol, 2023 Feb 15;23(1):72.
    PMID: 36792988 DOI: 10.1186/s12883-023-03102-z
    BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The corononavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in modifications in the workflow and redistribution of human resources, causing challenges in setting up of an acute stroke service. We would like to share our preliminary outcome amid this pandemic, to determine if the implementation of COVID-19 standard operating procedures (SOPs) affected the delivery of our hyperacute stroke service.

    METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed one-year data from our stroke registry that began with the establishment of our hyperacute stroke service at Universiti Putra Malaysia Teaching Hospital from April 2020 until May 2021.

    RESULTS: Setting up acute stroke services during the pandemic with constrained manpower and implementation of COVID-19 SOPs, was challenging. There was a significant dip of stroke admission from April to June 2020 due to the Movement Control Order (MCO) implemented by the government to curb the spread of COVID-19. However, the numbers of stroke admission steadily rose approaching 2021, after the implementation of recovery MCO. We managed to treat 75 patients with hyperacute stroke interventions i.e. intravenous thrombolysis (IVT), mechanical thrombectomy (MT) or both. Despite implementing COVID-19 SOPs and using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as our first line acute stroke imaging modality, clinical outcomes in our cohort were encouraging; almost 40% of patients who underwent hyperacute stroke treatment had early neurological recovery (ENR), and only 33% of patients had early neurological stability (ENS). In addition, we were able to maintain our door-to-imaging (DTI) and door-to-needle (DTN) time in line with international recommendations.

    CONCLUSIONS: Our data reflects that COVID-19 SOPs did not deter successful delivery of hyperacute stroke services in our center. However, bigger and multi center studies are required to support our findings.

    Matched MeSH terms: Thrombolytic Therapy/methods; Thrombectomy/methods
  5. Raman K, Govindaraju R, James K, Abu Bakar MZ, Patil N, Shah MN
    J Laryngol Otol, 2023 Feb;137(2):169-173.
    PMID: 34924062 DOI: 10.1017/S0022215121004175
    OBJECTIVE: Knowledge of anatomical variations of the frontal recess and frontal sinus and recognition of endoscopic landmarks are vital for safe and effective endoscopic sinus surgery. This study revisited an anatomical landmark in the frontal recess that could serve as a guide to the frontal sinus.

    METHOD: Prevalence of the anterior ethmoid genu, its morphology and its relationship with the frontal sinus drainage pathway was assessed. Computed tomography scans with multiplanar reconstruction were used to study non-diseased sinonasal complexes.

    RESULTS: The anterior ethmoidal genu was present in all 102 anatomical sides studied, independent of age, gender and race. Its position was within the frontal sinus drainage pathway, and the drainage pathway was medial to it in 98 of 102 cases. The anterior ethmoidal genu sometimes extended laterally and formed a recess bounded by the lamina papyracea laterally, by the uncinate process anteriorly and by the bulla ethmoidalis posteriorly. Distance of the anterior ethmoidal genu to frontal ostia can be determined by the height of the posterior wall of the agger nasi cell rather than its volume or other dimensions.

    CONCLUSION: This study confirmed that the anterior ethmoidal genu is a constant anatomical structure positioned within frontal sinus drainage pathway. The description of anterior ethmoidal genu found in this study explained the anatomical connection between the agger nasi cell, uncinate process and bulla ethmoidalis and its structural organisation.

    Matched MeSH terms: Endoscopy/methods; Tomography, X-Ray Computed/methods
  6. Cheong CC, Ong SY, Lim SM, Wan A WZ, Mansor M, Chaw SH
    Expert Rev Med Devices, 2023 Feb;20(2):151-160.
    PMID: 36715659 DOI: 10.1080/17434440.2023.2174850
    PURPOSE: A previous study reported a shorter time to tracheal intubation by reducing percentage of glottic opening (POGO) view to <50% when intubating a normal adult airway using the GlidescopeTM blade. We evaluate the efficacy of reducing POGO to <50% when intubating patients with rigid cervical immobilization using CMACTM D blade.

    METHODS: One hundred and four adult patients were randomized to group POGO 100% or POGO <50% . Laryngoscopy was performed by advancing tip of the D blade at vallecula. POGO 100% was achieved by exerting upward force to displace epiglottis until glottic opening from the anterior commissure to inter arytenoid notch. POGO < 50% was acquired by withdrawing the D blade tip dorsally from vallecula. The primary outcome was time to intubation.

    RESULTS: The median time (IQR) to successful intubation was 29 (25-35) seconds for group POGO < 50% and 34 (28-40) seconds for group with POGO 100% (difference in medians, 5 seconds; 95% confidence interval, 2 to 8, p = 0.003). Complications were minor.

    CONCLUSION: Using the CMACTM D blade with a reduced POGO in patients with cervical spine immobilization resulted in faster tracheal intubation.

    TRIAL REGISTRATION: The trial is registered at ClinicalTrial.gov (CT.gov identifier: NCT04833166).

    Matched MeSH terms: Intubation, Intratracheal/methods; Laryngoscopy/methods
  7. Wong LP
    Singapore Med J, 2008 Mar;49(3):256-60; quiz 261.
    PMID: 18363011
    Focus group discussion is a research methodology in which a small group of participants gather to discuss a specified topic or an issue to generate data. The main characteristic of a focus group is the interaction between the moderator and the group, as well as the interaction between group members. The objective is to give the researcher an understanding of the participants' perspective on the topic in discussion. Focus groups are rapidly gaining popularity in health and medical research. This paper presents a general introduction of the use of focus groups as a research tool within the context of health research, with the intention of promoting its use among researchers in healthcare. A detailed methodology for the conduct of focus groups and analysis of focus group data are discussed. The potentials and limitations of this qualitative research technique are also highlighted.
    Matched MeSH terms: Focus Groups/methods*; Biomedical Research/methods*
  8. Dhaliwal JS, Malar B, Quck CK, Sukumaran KD, Hassan K
    Singapore Med J, 1991 Jun;32(3):163-5.
    PMID: 1876889
    Immunoperoxidase staining was compared with flowcytometry for the enumeration of lymphocyte subsets. The percentages obtained for peripheral blood lymphocytes using immunoperoxidase (CD3 = 76 CD4 = 27.9, B = 10.7 CD4/CD8 = 1.8) differed significantly from those obtained by flowcytometry (CD3 = 65.7 CD4 = 39.4, CD8 = 25.6, B = 16.7, HLA DR = 11.9 CD4/CD8 = 1.54) for certain subsets (CD3, CD4, B). There was no significant difference in lymphocyte subsets between children and adults using the same method. These differences are probably due to the different methods used to prepare lymphocytes for analysis. Other factors that should also be considered are the presence of CD4 antigen on monocytes and CD8 on natural killer cells.
    Matched MeSH terms: Flow Cytometry/methods*; Leukocyte Count/methods
  9. Masanam HB, Perumal G, Krishnan S, Singh SK, Jha NK, Chellappan DK, et al.
    Nanomedicine (Lond), 2022 Oct;17(25):1981-2005.
    PMID: 36695290 DOI: 10.2217/nnm-2021-0427
    The development of rapid, noninvasive diagnostics to detect lung diseases is a great need after the COVID-2019 outbreak. The nanotechnology-based approach has improved imaging and facilitates the early diagnosis of inflammatory lung diseases. The multifunctional properties of nanoprobes enable better spatial-temporal resolution and a high signal-to-noise ratio in imaging. Targeted nanoimaging agents have been used to bind specific tissues in inflammatory lungs for early-stage diagnosis. However, nanobased imaging approaches for inflammatory lung diseases are still in their infancy. This review provides a solution-focused approach to exploring medical imaging technologies and nanoprobes for the detection of inflammatory lung diseases. Prospects for the development of contrast agents for lung disease detection are also discussed.
    Matched MeSH terms: Diagnostic Imaging/methods; Nanotechnology/methods
  10. Sany SB, Hashim R, Rezayi M, Rahman MA, Razavizadeh BB, Abouzari-lotf E, et al.
    Environ Sci Pollut Res Int, 2015 Aug;22(15):11193-208.
    PMID: 25953606 DOI: 10.1007/s11356-015-4511-x
    Current ecological risk assessment (ERA) schemes focus mainly on bioaccumulation and toxicity of pollutants in individual organisms. Ecological models are tools mainly used to assess ecological risks of pollutants to ecosystems, communities, and populations. Their main advantage is the relatively direct integration of the species sensitivity to organic pollutants, the fate and mechanism of action in the environment of toxicants, and life-history features of the individual organism of concern. To promote scientific consensus on ERA schemes, this review is intended to provide a guideline on short-term ERA involving dioxin chemicals and to identify key findings for exposure assessment based on policies of different agencies. It also presents possible adverse effects of dioxins on ecosystems, toxicity equivalence methodology, environmental fate and transport modeling, and development of stressor-response profiles for dioxin-like chemicals.
    Matched MeSH terms: Risk Assessment/methods*; Ecotoxicology/methods*
  11. Huang Z, Wang J, Lu X, Mohd Zain A, Yu G
    Brief Bioinform, 2023 Mar 19;24(2).
    PMID: 36733262 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbad040
    Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data are typically with a large number of missing values, which often results in the loss of critical gene signaling information and seriously limit the downstream analysis. Deep learning-based imputation methods often can better handle scRNA-seq data than shallow ones, but most of them do not consider the inherent relations between genes, and the expression of a gene is often regulated by other genes. Therefore, it is essential to impute scRNA-seq data by considering the regional gene-to-gene relations. We propose a novel model (named scGGAN) to impute scRNA-seq data that learns the gene-to-gene relations by Graph Convolutional Networks (GCN) and global scRNA-seq data distribution by Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN). scGGAN first leverages single-cell and bulk genomics data to explore inherent relations between genes and builds a more compact gene relation network to jointly capture the homogeneous and heterogeneous information. Then, it constructs a GCN-based GAN model to integrate the scRNA-seq, gene sequencing data and gene relation network for generating scRNA-seq data, and trains the model through adversarial learning. Finally, it utilizes data generated by the trained GCN-based GAN model to impute scRNA-seq data. Experiments on simulated and real scRNA-seq datasets show that scGGAN can effectively identify dropout events, recover the biologically meaningful expressions, determine subcellular states and types, improve the differential expression analysis and temporal dynamics analysis. Ablation experiments confirm that both the gene relation network and gene sequence data help the imputation of scRNA-seq data.
    Matched MeSH terms: Sequence Analysis, RNA/methods; Single-Cell Analysis/methods
  12. Najam M, Rasool RU, Ahmad HF, Ashraf U, Malik AW
    Biomed Res Int, 2019;2019:7074387.
    PMID: 31111064 DOI: 10.1155/2019/7074387
    Storing and processing of large DNA sequences has always been a major problem due to increasing volume of DNA sequence data. However, a number of solutions have been proposed but they require significant computation and memory. Therefore, an efficient storage and pattern matching solution is required for DNA sequencing data. Bloom filters (BFs) represent an efficient data structure, which is mostly used in the domain of bioinformatics for classification of DNA sequences. In this paper, we explore more dimensions where BFs can be used other than classification. A proposed solution is based on Multiple Bloom Filters (MBFs) that finds all the locations and number of repetitions of the specified pattern inside a DNA sequence. Both of these factors are extremely important in determining the type and intensity of any disease. This paper serves as a first effort towards optimizing the search for location and frequency of substrings in DNA sequences using MBFs. We expect that further optimizations in the proposed solution can bring remarkable results as this paper presents a proof of concept implementation for a given set of data using proposed MBFs technique. Performance evaluation shows improved accuracy and time efficiency of the proposed approach.
    Matched MeSH terms: Sequence Analysis, DNA/methods*; Computational Biology/methods*
  13. Lai MY, Lau YL
    Am J Trop Med Hyg, 2022 Oct 12;107(4):815-819.
    PMID: 35970289 DOI: 10.4269/ajtmh.22-0136
    We developed a combination of recombinase polymerase and loop-mediated isothermal amplification methods (RAMP) for rapid screening of five human Plasmodium spp. simultaneously. RAMP is a two-stage isothermal amplification method, which consists of a first-stage recombinase polymerase amplification and a second-stage loop-mediated isothermal amplification. Under these two isothermal conditions, five Plasmodium spp. were amplified in less than 40 minutes. We demonstrated RAMP assay with 10-fold better limit of detection than a single (loop-mediated isothermal amplification) LAMP. As compared with microscopy, RAMP assay showed 100% sensitivity (95% CI: 95.65-100.00%) and 100% specificity (95% CI: 69.15-100.00%). The end products were inspected by the color changes of neutral red. Positive reactions were indicated by pink while the negative reactions remained yellow. The combination assay established in this study can be used as a routine diagnostic method for malaria.
    Matched MeSH terms: Nucleic Acid Amplification Techniques/methods; Molecular Diagnostic Techniques/methods
  14. Lee PY, Low TY
    Methods Mol Biol, 2023;2690:299-310.
    PMID: 37450156 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3327-4_25
    Affinity purification coupled to mass spectrometry (AP-MS) is a powerful method to analyze protein-protein interactions (PPIs). The AP-MS approach provides an unbiased analysis of the entire protein complex and is useful to identify indirect interactors. However, reliable protein identification from the complex AP-MS experiments requires appropriate control of false identifications and rigorous statistical analysis. Another challenge that can arise from AP-MS analysis is to distinguish bona fide interacting proteins from the non-specifically bound endogenous proteins or the "background contaminants" that co-purified by the bait experiments. In this chapter, we will first describe the protocol for performing in-solution trypsinization for the samples from the AP experiment followed by LC-MS/MS analysis. We will then detail the MaxQuant workflow for protein identification and quantification for the PPI data derived from the AP-MS experiment. Finally, we describe the CRAPome interface to process the data by filtering against contaminant lists, score the interactions and visualize the protein interaction networks.
    Matched MeSH terms: Chromatography, Affinity/methods; Proteomics/methods
  15. Al-Masni MA, Lee S, Al-Shamiri AK, Gho SM, Choi YH, Kim DH
    Comput Biol Med, 2023 Feb;153:106553.
    PMID: 36641933 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.106553
    Patient movement during Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan can cause severe degradation of image quality. In Susceptibility Weighted Imaging (SWI), several echoes are typically measured during a single repetition period, where the earliest echoes show less contrast between various tissues, while the later echoes are more susceptible to artifacts and signal dropout. In this paper, we propose a knowledge interaction paradigm that jointly learns feature details from multiple distorted echoes by sharing their knowledge with unified training parameters, thereby simultaneously reducing motion artifacts of all echoes. This is accomplished by developing a new scheme that boosts a Single Encoder with Multiple Decoders (SEMD), which assures that the generated features not only get fused but also learned together. We called the proposed method Knowledge Interaction Learning between Multi-Echo data (KIL-ME-based SEMD). The proposed KIL-ME-based SEMD allows to share information and gain an understanding of the correlations between the multiple echoes. The main purpose of this work is to correct the motion artifacts and maintain image quality and structure details of all motion-corrupted echoes towards generating high-resolution susceptibility enhanced contrast images, i.e., SWI, using a weighted average of multi-echo motion-corrected acquisitions. We also compare various potential strategies that might be used to address the problem of reducing artifacts in multi-echoes data. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method, reducing the severity of motion artifacts and improving the overall clinical image quality of all echoes with their associated SWI maps. Significant improvement of image quality is observed using both motion-simulated test data and actual volunteer data with various motion severity strengths. Eventually, by enhancing the overall image quality, the proposed network can increase the effectiveness of the physicians' capability to evaluate and correctly diagnose brain MR images.
    Matched MeSH terms: Image Enhancement/methods; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted/methods
  16. Sharko F, Rbbani G, Siriyappagouder P, Raeymaekers JAM, Galindo-Villegas J, Nedoluzhko A, et al.
    BMC Bioinformatics, 2023 May 19;24(1):205.
    PMID: 37208611 DOI: 10.1186/s12859-023-05331-y
    BACKGROUND: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are covalently closed-loop RNAs with critical regulatory roles in cells. Tens of thousands of circRNAs have been unveiled due to the recent advances in high throughput RNA sequencing technologies and bioinformatic tools development. At the same time, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) cross-validation for circRNAs predicted by bioinformatic tools remains an essential part of any circRNA study before publication.

    RESULTS: Here, we present the CircPrime web-based platform, providing a user-friendly solution for DNA primer design and thermocycling conditions for circRNA identification with routine PCR methods.

    CONCLUSIONS: User-friendly CircPrime web platform ( http://circprime.elgene.net/ ) works with outputs of the most popular bioinformatic predictors of circRNAs to design specific circular RNA primers. CircPrime works with circRNA coordinates and any reference genome from the National Center for Biotechnology Information database).

    Matched MeSH terms: Sequence Analysis, RNA/methods; Computational Biology/methods
  17. Kaplan E, Baygin M, Barua PD, Dogan S, Tuncer T, Altunisik E, et al.
    Med Eng Phys, 2023 May;115:103971.
    PMID: 37120169 DOI: 10.1016/j.medengphy.2023.103971
    PURPOSE: The classification of medical images is an important priority for clinical research and helps to improve the diagnosis of various disorders. This work aims to classify the neuroradiological features of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) using an automatic hand-modeled method with high accuracy.

    MATERIALS AND METHOD: This work uses two (private and public) datasets. The private dataset consists of 3807 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computer tomography (CT) images belonging to two (normal and AD) classes. The second public (Kaggle AD) dataset contains 6400 MR images. The presented classification model comprises three fundamental phases: feature extraction using an exemplar hybrid feature extractor, neighborhood component analysis-based feature selection, and classification utilizing eight different classifiers. The novelty of this model is feature extraction. Vision transformers inspire this phase, and hence 16 exemplars are generated. Histogram-oriented gradients (HOG), local binary pattern (LBP) and local phase quantization (LPQ) feature extraction functions have been applied to each exemplar/patch and raw brain image. Finally, the created features are merged, and the best features are selected using neighborhood component analysis (NCA). These features are fed to eight classifiers to obtain highest classification performance using our proposed method. The presented image classification model uses exemplar histogram-based features; hence, it is called ExHiF.

    RESULTS: We have developed the ExHiF model with a ten-fold cross-validation strategy using two (private and public) datasets with shallow classifiers. We have obtained 100% classification accuracy using cubic support vector machine (CSVM) and fine k nearest neighbor (FkNN) classifiers for both datasets.

    CONCLUSIONS: Our developed model is ready to be validated with more datasets and has the potential to be employed in mental hospitals to assist neurologists in confirming their manual screening of AD using MRI/CT images.

    Matched MeSH terms: Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted/methods; Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods
  18. Finsterer J
    Med J Malaysia, 2023 May;78(3):421-426.
    PMID: 37271853
    OBJECTIVES: Severe, acute, respiratory syndromecoronavirus- 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections can be complicated by central nervous system (CNS) disease. One of the CNS disorders associated with Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID- 19) is posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES). This narrative review summarises and discusses previous and recent findings on SARS-CoV-2 associated PRES.

    METHODS: A literature search was carried out in PubMed and Google Scholar using suitable search terms and reference lists of articles found were searched for further articles.

    RESULTS: By the end of February 2023, 82 patients with SARS-CoV-2 associated PRES were recorded. The latency between the onset of COVID-19 and the onset of PRES ranged from 1 day to 70 days. The most common presentations of PRES were mental deterioration (n=47), seizures (n=46) and visual disturbances (n=18). Elevated blood pressure was reported on admission or during hospitalisation in 48 patients. The most common comorbidities were arterial hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia and atherosclerosis. PRES was best diagnosed by multimodal cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Complete recovery was reported in 35 patients and partial recovery in 21 patients, while seven patients died.

    CONCLUSIONS: PRES can be a CNS complication associated with COVID-19. COVID-19 patients with mental dysfunction, seizures or visual disturbances should immediately undergo CNS imaging through multimodal MRI, electroencephalography (EEG) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) studies in order not to miss PRES.

    Matched MeSH terms: Electroencephalography/methods; Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods
  19. Nagendrababu V, Pulikkotil SJ, Veettil SK, Teerawattanapong N, Setzer FC
    J Endod, 2018 Jun;44(6):914-922.e2.
    PMID: 29709297 DOI: 10.1016/j.joen.2018.02.017
    INTRODUCTION: Successful anesthesia with an inferior alveolar nerve block (IANB) is imperative for treating patients with irreversible pulpitis in mandibular teeth. This systematic review assessed the efficacy of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) as oral premedications on the success of IANBs in irreversible pulpitis.

    METHODS: Three databases were searched to identify randomized clinical trials (RCTs) published up until September 2017. Retrieved RCTs were evaluated using the revised Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool. The primary efficacy outcome of interest was the success rate of IANB anesthesia. Meta-analytic estimates (risk ratio [RR] with 95% confidence intervals [CIs]) performed using a random effects model and publication bias determined using funnel plot analysis were assessed. Random errors were evaluated with trial sequential analyses, and the quality of evidence was appraised using a Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach.

    RESULTS: Thirteen RCTs (N = 1034) were included. Eight studies had low risk of bias. Statistical analysis of good-quality RCTs showed a significant beneficial effect of any NSAID in increasing the anesthetic success of IANBs compared with placebo (RR = 1.92; 95% CI, 1.55-2.38). Subgroup analyses showed a similar beneficial effect for ibuprofen, diclofenac, and ketorolac (RR = 1.83 [95% CI, 1.43-2.35], RR = 2.56 [95% CI, 1.46-4.50], and RR = 2.07 [95% CI, 1.47-2.90], respectively). Dose-dependent ibuprofen >400 mg/d (RR = 1.85; 95% CI, 1.39-2.45) was shown to be effective; however, ibuprofen ≤400 mg/d showed no association (RR = 1.78; 95% CI, 0.90-3.55). TSA confirmed conclusive evidence for a beneficial effect of NSAIDs for IANB premedication. The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach did not reveal any concerns regarding the quality of the results.

    CONCLUSIONS: Oral premedication with NSAIDs and ibuprofen (>400 mg/d) increased the anesthetic success of IANBs in patients with irreversible pulpitis.

    Matched MeSH terms: Anesthesia, Dental/methods*; Nerve Block/methods*
  20. Shamim S, Awan MJ, Mohd Zain A, Naseem U, Mohammed MA, Garcia-Zapirain B
    J Healthc Eng, 2022;2022:6566982.
    PMID: 35422980 DOI: 10.1155/2022/6566982
    The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a terrible impact on human lives globally, with far-reaching consequences for the health and well-being of many people around the world. Statistically, 305.9 million people worldwide tested positive for COVID-19, and 5.48 million people died due to COVID-19 up to 10 January 2022. CT scans can be used as an alternative to time-consuming RT-PCR testing for COVID-19. This research work proposes a segmentation approach to identifying ground glass opacity or ROI in CT images developed by coronavirus, with a modified structure of the Unet model having been used to classify the region of interest at the pixel level. The problem with segmentation is that the GGO often appears indistinguishable from a healthy lung in the initial stages of COVID-19, and so, to cope with this, the increased set of weights in contracting and expanding the Unet path and an improved convolutional module is added in order to establish the connection between the encoder and decoder pipeline. This has a major capacity to segment the GGO in the case of COVID-19, with the proposed model being referred to as "convUnet." The experiment was performed on the Medseg1 dataset, and the addition of a set of weights at each layer of the model and modification in the connected module in Unet led to an improvement in overall segmentation results. The quantitative results obtained using accuracy, recall, precision, dice-coefficient, F1score, and IOU were 93.29%, 93.01%, 93.67%, 92.46%, 93.34%, 86.96%, respectively, which is better than that obtained using Unet and other state-of-the-art models. Therefore, this segmentation approach proved to be more accurate, fast, and reliable in helping doctors to diagnose COVID-19 quickly and efficiently.
    Matched MeSH terms: Image Processing, Computer-Assisted/methods; Tomography, X-Ray Computed/methods
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