Sonographic evaluation of clinically occult inguinal hernias in patients with scrotal pain and normal scrotal color Doppler sonography

Scrotal pain, whether acute or chronic, is a common clinical presentation that can be caused by a diverse array of disorders involving different anatomic structures. Because of pain and guarding, patients are usually incooprative for physical examination and thus, not be reliable. This makes definitive diagnosis difficult for even the most experienced clinician. Sonography can be invaluable in evaluating of patient with scrotal pain. The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence of accult inguinal hernia in patients with scorotal pain who have normal physical examination and normal scorotal color Doppler sonography to improve the weakness of clinical diagnosis. A total of 101 patients who have scrotal pain, were referred prospectively with clinically normal physical examination and normal scorotal color Doppler sonography for ultrasound examinations of occult inguinal hernia. Also we evaluate prevalence of unilateral or bilateral occult inguinal hernia and direct or indirect occult inguinal hernia. Overall, with mean age of 29.4 ± 7.56 years ,mean wight of 76.5 ±9.52 kilogram and mean symtoms duration of 11.9 ±9.15 days, scans showed 51.5 occult direct inguinal hernia,14 occult indirect inguinal hernia and 35 with no evidence of hernia.11.9 of patients have bilateral hernia, 21.8 have left inguinal hernia and 31.7 have right inguinal hernia. A higher incidence of inguinal hernia was associated with age increasement (p = 0.015) and weight increasement (P= 0.01). In conclusion, with achieved prevalence of occult hernia (65.5), in patients with scorotal pain who have normal physical examination and normal scorotal color Doppler sonography in this study, we recommend ultrasonographic evaluation for these patients, since it's noninvasive and available

Estimation of the population attributable fraction of road-related injuries due to speeding and passing in Iran

OBJECTIVES: Speeding and passing are considered to be the main human factors resulting in road traffic injuries (RTIs). This study aimed to estimate the population attributeable fraction (PAF) of speeding and passing in RTIs in rural Iran during 2012. METHODS: The contribution of speeding and passing to RTI-related morbidity and mortality was estimated using the PAF method. The prevalence of speeding and passing was obtained from the national traffic police data registry. A logistic regression model was used to measure the association between the above risk factors and RTIs. RESULTS: Speeding accounted for 20.96 and 16.61 of rural road-related deaths and injuries, respectively. The corresponding values for passing were 13.50 and 13.44, respectively. Jointly, the PAF of these factors was 31.63 for road-related deaths and 27.81 for injuries. CONCLUSIONS: This study illustrates the importance of controlling speeding and passing as a high-priority aspect of public-health approaches to RTIs in Iran. It is recommended that laws restricting speeding and passing be enforced more strictly

Features selection approaches for an objective control of cosmetic quality of coated surfaces

The cosmetic aspect is one of the main functions of industrial surfaces in numerous applications. Even the smallest surface defects may have a critical effect on the cosmetic tolerability of such industrial surfaces. Thus, surfaces are generally coated at the last manufacturing process stage to cover existing defects and to certify their cosmetic quality. The surface quality is however constantly controlled after coating that induces an increase of lead-time increase and production costs. This is due to a various flaw patterns and a lack of uncoated surfaces specifications. Hence, the identification of relevant surface morphological parameters underlies an objective and automatic cosmetic control performance. In fact, this relevant parameter selection allows tracking surface flaws during the coating finishing operation. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of various feature selection tools for data analysis (Neighbourhood Component Analysis (NCA), ReliefF, Sequential wrapper method, Decision tree) to extract relevant information out of physical data. A design of experiment based on scratches test on amorphous polymers to generate typical controlled defects has been performed. Then, several cosmetic defects characteristics were extracted from experimental measurements. Feature selection approaches were applied and compared to determine the most relevant parameters. The advantages and limitations of each method for data analysis have been highlighted in the case of real engineering surface quality control