Evaluation and treatment of neurogenic bowel dysfunction – a review

Neurogenic bowel dysfunction is a severely troubling entity for patients with neurological disease or injury. The complex symptom cluster presents a challenge, not only for the patients but also for the treating clinician. Without intervention, patients are bound to have a reduced quality of life, and experience social impacts and secondary complications that come along with it. A careful initial assessment provides an idea of symptom severity and is crucial for successful rehabilitation. The mainstay of treatment remains a conservative approach of managing faecal incontinence or optimising the mechanics of defecation to improve patient’s quality of life. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive review of existing literature on pathophysiology, assessment and management of neurogenic bowel dysfunction

Anorectal manometry in children with defecation disorders BSPGHAN Motility Working Group consensus statement

Defecatory disorders in children, including chronic constipation (CC) and fecal incontinence (FI), are common conditions worldwide and have a significant impact on children, their families, and the healthcare system. Anorectal manometry (ARM) and high‐resolution anorectal manometry (HRAM) are relatively novel tools for the assessment of anal sphincter function and rectal sensation and have contributed significantly to improving the understanding of the anorectum as a functional unit. ARM has been recognized as the investigation of choice for adults with symptoms of defecation disorders, including fecal incontinence (FI), evacuation difficulties, and constipation. Although it is the gold standard tool in adults, it has yet to be formally accepted as a standardized diagnostic tool in the pediatric age, with limited knowledge regarding indications, protocol, and normal values. ARM/HRAM is slowly becoming recognized among pediatricians, but given that there are currently no agreed guidelines there is a risk that will lead to diversity in practice. The British Society of Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (BSPGHAN)—Motility Working Group (MWG) therefore has taken the opportunity to provide guidance on the use of ARM/HRAM in children with CC and/or FI

Efficacy of Percutaneous Posterior Tibial Nerve Stimulation for the Management of Fecal Incontinence in Multiple Sclerosis: A Pilot Study

BACKGROUND: Fecal incontinence is a debilitating and highly prevalent problem among multiple sclerosis patients. Conservative therapies often fail to provide benefit. Posterior tibial nerve stimulation is a minimally invasive neuromodulatory therapy with proven efficacy for fecal incontinence in non-neurological settings. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of posterior tibial nerve stimulation in treating multiple sclerosis-related fecal incontinence. METHODS: Consecutive multiple sclerosis patients with fecal incontinence that had failed conservative therapy received posterior tibial nerve stimulation between 2012 and 2015. All patients had previously undergone anorectal physiology tests and endoanal ultrasound. Patients whose Wexner incontinence score reduced below 10 post-therapy or halved from baseline were deemed responders. RESULTS: Thirty-three patients (25 female, median age 43 years) were included. Twenty-three (70%) had urge, 4 (12%) passive, and 9 (27%) mixed fecal incontinence. Twenty-six (79%) were classified as responders. The majority of subjects had relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (67%); those had a significantly higher response rate (95% vs. 67% and 50% in primary and secondary progressive respectively, P < 0.05). Responders tended to be more symptomatic at baseline and had greater improvements in bowel symptom scores and quality of life scores with therapy. CONCLUSION: Posterior tibial nerve stimulation demonstrates potential as an effective therapy for fecal incontinence in multiple sclerosis. These findings provide the basis for future more definitive controlled studies

Proton Density Fat Suppressed MRI in 3T Increases the Sensitivity of Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Detection in the Cervical Spinal Cord

Purpose: Considering the number of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients referred for clinical spinal cord imaging, the optimization of imaging protocols plays a crucial role. We aimed to evaluate the use of proton density (PD) turbo spin-echo (TSE) with spectral attenuated inversion recovery (SPAIR) fat suppression and compare it with the currently recommended T2-TSE-SPAIR in sagittal plane in cervical spinal cord imaging. Methods: In this study 35 MS patients with clinically suspected or known spinal cord lesions were scanned on a 3.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. In addition to the routine protocol, PD-TSE-SPAIR sequences were obtained to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate lesion detectability and image quality compared to T2-TSE-SPAIR sequences. Quantitative analysis was based on measurements of lesion-to-cord contrast ratio (LCCR), lesion contrast-to-noise ratio (LCNR) and lesion dimensions and the qualitative analysis on ranking with a predetermined score scale. The presence of lesions in these sequences was verified in axial T2 multi-echo gradient echo images. Results: In quantitative analysis, the lesions on PD-TSE-SPAIR had statistically significantly higher contrast (p &lt; 0.05), according to the statistical test of LCCR, LCNR calculated contrast and measured lesion dimensions. Qualitative analyses were congruent with quantitative results; the median rank of PD-TSE-SPAIR was significantly higher than T2-TSE-SPAIR (p &lt; 0.05). Of the 34 detected lesions 9 (26%) were not visualized in T2-TSE-SPAIR sequence. Conclusion: Considering its superiority in contrast ratios and lesion dimensions when compared to T2-TSE-SPAIR in both qualitative and quantitative analyses, we therefore recommend PD-TSE-SPAIR as a pivotal sequence to evaluate demyelinating spinal cord lesions at 3T. © 2017, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany

Modelling crowdsourcing originated keywords within the athletics domain

Image classification arises as an important phase in the overall process of automatic image annotation and image retrieval. Usually, a set of manually annotated images is used to train supervised systems and classify images into classes. The act of crowdsourcing has largely focused on investigating strategies for reducing the time, cost and effort required for the creation of the annotated data. In this paper we experiment with the efficiency of various classifiers in building visual models for keywords through crowdsourcing with the aid of Weka tool and a variety of low-level features. A total number of 500 manually annotated images related to athletics domain are used to build and test 8 visual models. The experimental results have been examined using the classification accuracy and are very promising showing the ability of the visual models to classify the images into the corresponding classes with the highest average classification accuracy of 74.38% in the purpose of SMO data classifie

Gray matter and white matter changes in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients with or without cognitive impairment: A combined voxel-based morphometry and tract-based spatial statistics whole-brain analysis

The phenotypic heterogeneity in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) implies that patients show structural changes within but also beyond the motor cortex and corticospinal tract and furthermore outside the frontal lobes, even if frank dementia is not detected. The aim of the present study was to investigate both gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) changes in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients with or without cognitive impairment (ALS-motor and ALS-plus, respectively). Nineteen ALS-motor, 31 ALS-plus and 25 healthy controls (HC) underwent 3D–T1-weighted and 30-directional diffusion-weighted imaging on a 3 T MRI scanner. Voxel-based morphometry and tract-based spatial-statistics analysis were performed to examine GM volume (GMV) changes and WM differences in fractional anisotropy (FA), axial and radial diffusivity (AD, RD, respectively). Compared to HC, ALS-motor patients showed decreased GMV in frontal and cerebellar areas and increased GMV in right supplementary motor area, while ALS-plus patients showed diffuse GMV reduction in primary motor cortex bilaterally, frontotemporal areas, cerebellum and basal ganglia. ALS-motor patients had increased GMV in left precuneus compared to ALS-plus patients. We also found decreased FA and increased RD in the corticospinal tract bilaterally, the corpus callosum and extra-motor tracts in ALS-motor patients, and decreased FA and increased AD and RD in motor and several WM tracts in ALS-plus patients, compared to HC. Multimodal neuroimaging confirms motor and extra-motor GM and WM abnormalities in non-demented cognitively-impaired ALS patients (ALS-plus) and identifies early extra-motor brain pathology in ALS patients without cognitive impairment (ALS-motor). © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York

Memory-related white matter tract integrity in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: an advanced neuroimaging and neuropsychological study

We aimed to investigate structural changes in vivo in memory-related white matter tracts (i.e., perforant pathway zone [PPZ]; uncinate fasciculus [UF]; fornix) using diffusion tensor tractography and evaluate possible associations with memory performance in nondemented patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Forty-two ALS patients and 25 healthy controls (HCs) underwent a 30-directional diffusion-weighted imaging on a 3T MR scanner, followed by tractography of PPZ, UF, and fornix and analysis of fractional anisotropy (FA), axial diffusivity and radial diffusivity (Dr). Patients were administered neuropsychological measures of verbal (list learning via Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test [RAVLT] and prose memory via Babcock Story Recall Test) and nonverbal (Rey&apos;s Complex Figure Test) episodic memory. After correcting for multiple comparisons, ALS patients showed increased Dr in the left PPZ compared to HC. We then fitted a multivariate general linear model within ALS patients with neuropsychological measures as dependent variables and age, age2, gender, verbal IQ, and diffusion tensor tractography metrics with at least medium effect size differences between ALS and HC as independent variables. We found that (1) left PPZ FA, gender, and verbal IQ contributed to RAVLT-Total Learning; (2) left PPZ FA, left UF Dr, and gender contributed to RAVLT-Immediate Recall; and (3) left PPZ FA and left UF axial diffusivity contributed to Babcock Story Recall Test-Immediate and Delayed Recall. Advanced neuroimaging techniques verified in this study previously reported neuropathological findings regarding PPZ degeneration in ALS. We also detected a unique contribution of microstructural changes in hippocampal and frontotemporal white matter tracts on patients&apos; memory profile. © 2016 Elsevier Inc