Secretory azoospermia or non-obstructive azoospermia?

In the non-obstructive azoospermia versus the secretory azoospermia it is first necessary to have a clear assessment and definition and then takes care of the patient before the surgical sampling taking into account the age of the woman and in fine try to optimize the residual spermatogenesis. Biopsy seems to be the "gold standard" in non-obstructive azoospermia. The mean level of retrieval (extracted) spermatozoa is of 50%, with 20% of pregnancy/cycle and 30% of delivery/coupe with a better success for frozen sperm samples

Comparison of outcomes in patients with abandoned versus extracted implantable cardioverter defibrillator leads

SummaryBackgroundDespite the increased number of implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) recipients and the frequent need for device upgrading and/or occurrence of lead malfunction, the optimal approach to managing abandoned leads remains debated. Aims To determine the rate and type of complications related to either abandoned or extracted ICD leads. Methods Patients with abandoned or extracted leads were identified retrospectively. Patient medical records were reviewed to assess long-term lead or device malfunction, defibrillation test values before and after lead abandonment or extraction, and appropriateness of delivered shocks and subsequent surgical procedures related to devices or leads. Results A total of 58 ICD patients with 47 extracted and 34 abandoned leads were identified. After a mean follow-up of 3.2 ± 2.6 years, the defibrillation test was not affected by either abandoned or extracted leads (23.4 ± 6.6 J vs 25.4 ± 4.9 J, respectively; P = 0.24). There were no differences in the number of ICD-related surgical procedures after extracting versus abandoning leads (22% vs 12%, respectively; P = 0.3) or in the thromboembolic event rate (7.7% vs 6.3%; P = 0.83). During follow-up, no differences in the occurrence of major complications or appropriate/inappropriate shocks were observed between patients with or without abandoned leads. Conclusion We observed no difference in rates of immediate or medium-term complications between extracting versus abandoning leads. Lead abandonment remains an alternative and safe option when extraction does not appear mandatory according to the age of the leads or experience of the operating centre

Monge's transport problem in the Heisenberg group

We prove the existence of solutions to Monge transport problem between two compactly supported Borel probability measures in the Heisenberg group equipped with its Carnot-Caratheodory distance assuming that the initial measure is absolutely continuous with respect to the Haar measure of the group

Spatio-temporal optimization of sampling for bluetongue vectors (<em>Culicoides</em>) near grazing livestock

BACKGROUND: Estimating the abundance of Culicoides using light traps is influenced by a large variation in abundance in time and place. This study investigates the optimal trapping strategy to estimate the abundance or presence/absence of Culicoides on a field with grazing animals. We used 45 light traps to sample specimens from the Culicoides obsoletus species complex on a 14 hectare field during 16 nights in 2009. FINDINGS: The large number of traps and catch nights enabled us to simulate a series of samples consisting of different numbers of traps (1-15) on each night. We also varied the number of catch nights when simulating the sampling, and sampled with increasing minimum distances between traps. We used resampling to generate a distribution of different mean and median abundance in each sample. Finally, we used the hypergeometric distribution to estimate the probability of falsely detecting absence of vectors on the field. The variation in the estimated abundance decreased steeply when using up to six traps, and was less pronounced when using more traps, although no clear cutoff was found. CONCLUSIONS: Despite spatial clustering in vector abundance, we found no effect of increasing the distance between traps. We found that 18 traps were generally required to reach 90% probability of a true positive catch when sampling just one night. But when sampling over two nights the same probability level was obtained with just three traps per night. The results are useful for the design of vector monitoring programmes on fields with grazing animals