Recurring pulmonary hamartomas: cause for concern?

We report the case of a well-controlled female asthmatic who developed \u27multiple pulmonary hamartomas\u27 on three separate occasions over a period of 25 years that necessitated surgical resection. To our knowledge, this is the first report of recurrent hamartomas in a single individual necessitating multiple thoracotomies

Utility of repeat cytological assessment of thyroid nodules initially classified as benign: clinical insights from multidisciplinary care in an Irish tertiary referral centre.

BACKGROUND: Fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) is the tool of choice for evaluating thyroid nodules with the majority classified as benign following initial assessment. However, concern remains about false negative results and some guidelines have recommended routine repeat aspirates. We aimed to assess the utility of routine repeat FNAB for nodules classified as benign on initial biopsy and to examine the impact of establishing a multidisciplinary team for the care of these patients. METHODS: We performed a retrospective review of 400 consecutive patients (413 nodules) who underwent FNAB of a thyroid nodule at our hospital between July 2008 and July 2011. Data recorded included demographic, clinical, histological and radiological variables. RESULTS: Three hundred and fifty seven patients (89 %) were female. Median follow-up was 5.5 years. Two hundred and fifty eight (63 %) nodules were diagnosed as benign. The rate of routine repeat biopsy increased significantly over the time course of the study (p for trend = 0.012). Nine Thy 2 nodules were classified differently on the basis of routine repeat biopsy; one patient was classified as malignant on repeat biopsy and was diagnosed with papillary thyroid carcinoma. Eight were classified as a follicular lesions on repeat biopsy-six diagnosed as benign following lobectomy; two declined lobectomy and were followed radiologically with no nodule size increase. CONCLUSIONS: The false negative rate of an initial benign cytology result, from a thyroid nodule aspirate, is low. In the setting of an experienced multidisciplinary thyroid team, routine repeat aspiration is not justified

Coplanar Waveguide to Microstrip Transition in Thin Polymer Film for Characterization and Packaging of Microwave Photonic Components

International audienceWe report in this paper two types of broadband transitions between microstrip and coplanar lines on thin benzocyclobutene (BCB) polymer substrate. They are both via-free, using electromagnetic coupling between the bottom and top ground planes, which simplifies the manufacturing of components driven by microstrip electrodes. In the first ones, the bottom ground is not patterned, which makes them particularly suitable to on-wafer measurement of components under development with coplanar probes. An ultra-broad bandwidth of 68 GHz (from 1 GHz to 69 GHz) was achieved with 20-µm BCB. In the second ones, intended for connectorizing components on thin substrate with coplanar connectors, the bottom ground is patterned to match the narrow center conductor (54 µm) on thin substrate to the wide center conductor (127 µm) of the connector with a tapered section, achieving to a experimental bandwidth 13 GHz for the moment

Design and realization of high-performance microwave and millimeter wave band-pass filters on thin polymer films

International audienceThis paper reports the design and manufacturing of microstrip band-pass filters with good performance in terms of both insertion loss and selectivity. The proof of concept is carried out on thin BCB polymer (70 µm) film very used in microelectronics thanks to its low loss tangent (tanδ = 0.0025). The studied filters are constituted of two resonators and they combine the compactness of microstrip resonators and the connection facility of coplanar pads due to microstrip - grounded coplanar waveguide transitions integrated with the filters

Caractérisation d’un générateur piézoélectrique flexible

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