Comparison of Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification and Simplified Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification Systems in Clinical Staging of Iranian Women with Pelvic Organ Prolapse

BACKGROUND፡ Pelvic organ prolapse is a common pelvic disorder among women. A standard staging system is needed to carefully evaluate the extent and severity of the disease, and initiate appropriate treatment. The aim of this study was to compare the two methods of standard and simplified pelvic organ prolapse quantification systems in clinical staging of Iranian women with pelvic organ prolapse.METHODS: This observational cross-sectional study was conducted on all women with complaints of seeing or feeling a vaginal lump or bulge and/or a dragging sensation who were presented to a pelvic floor disorders clinic of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran, Iran, from October 2018 to June 2019. All patients were evaluated in terms of pelvic organ prolapse severity and staging using both instruments. Also, length of time needed to complete the questionnaires were calculated. After data collection, the results of pelvic organ prolapse staging and degree of agreement between two examiners were evaluated.RESULTS: A total of 120 women with mean age of 50.92±13.12 years were evaluated. It was shown that there is an almost perfect agreement (kappa coefficient > 0.8) between standard and simplified pelvic organ prolapse quantification systems in all the 3 compartments. Also, there was almost a twofold increase in the time needed to perform standard pelvic organ prolapse quantification (4.16±1.01 minutes) compared to performing simplified pelvic organ prolapse quantification (2.12±1.14 minutes) (p=0.03).CONCLUSION: According to the results of this study, there is a substantial and almost perfect agreement between standard and simplified pelvic organ prolapse quantification systems in clinical staging of Iranian women with pelvic organ prolapse. It seems that using simplified pelvic organ prolapse quantification system is more applicable in clinical practice for staging of pelvic organ prolapse, with high reliability coefficient.&nbsp

Relationship between Serum Osteocalcin Level and Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: A Case-Control Study

BACKGROUND: Osteocalcin (OC) is the most common noncollagenous protein in bone matrix, which is synthesized only in bone tissue and by osteoblasts. The potential role of osteocalcin on glucose and fat metabolism has been previously reported. The aim of this study was to compare the serum OC level in pregnant women with and without gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).METHODS: In the present case-control study, all pregnant women who were referred to a obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Sari, Iran, and met the inclusion criteria underwent an overall screening with a 75-g glucose tolerance test (GTT) at week 24 to 28 of gestation. The study was conducted between September 2018 and February 2019. Based on criteria, the pregnant women with confirmed GDM were matched with pregnant women without GDM in terms of baseline characteristics such as chronological age and BMI. The serum OC levels were also measured if vitamin D and calcium levels were normal. All data were analyzed using SPSS 21.RESULTS: The two groups with and without GDM had no significant difference in terms of age, BMI and OC level. There was no significant correlation between age and BMI with OC level in healthy pregnant women, respectively (P=0.49 and P=0.58). The correlation between BMI and age with OC level in GTT-positive pregnant women was 0.05 and -0.172, respectively, which was not significant (P=0.77 and P=0.36).CONCLUSION: According to the results of this study, there is no significant difference of serum OC levels in pregnant women with GDM compared to healthy pregnancy. Given that the levels of serum insulin or insulin resistance have not been assessed, these indices are recommended to be evaluated in future studies.&nbsp

Empirical Evaluation of the Segment Anything Model (SAM) for Brain Tumor Segmentation

Brain tumor segmentation presents a formidable challenge in the field of Medical Image Segmentation. While deep-learning models have been useful, human expert segmentation remains the most accurate method. The recently released Segment Anything Model (SAM) has opened up the opportunity to apply foundation models to this difficult task. However, SAM was primarily trained on diverse natural images. This makes applying SAM to biomedical segmentation, such as brain tumors with less defined boundaries, challenging. In this paper, we enhanced SAM's mask decoder using transfer learning with the Decathlon brain tumor dataset. We developed three methods to encapsulate the four-dimensional data into three dimensions for SAM. An on-the-fly data augmentation approach has been used with a combination of rotations and elastic deformations to increase the size of the training dataset. Two key metrics: the Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) and the Hausdorff Distance 95th Percentile (HD95), have been applied to assess the performance of our segmentation models. These metrics provided valuable insights into the quality of the segmentation results. In our evaluation, we compared this improved model to two benchmarks: the pretrained SAM and the widely used model, nnUNetv2. We find that the improved SAM shows considerable improvement over the pretrained SAM, while nnUNetv2 outperformed the improved SAM in terms of overall segmentation accuracy. Nevertheless, the improved SAM demonstrated slightly more consistent results than nnUNetv2, especially on challenging cases that can lead to larger Hausdorff distances. In the future, more advanced techniques can be applied in order to further improve the performance of SAM on brain tumor segmentation

Cardiac myxomas: Short- and long-term follow-up

Background: Cardiac myxomas are the most frequently encountered benign intracardiac tumors, that, if left untreated, are inexorably progressive and potentially fatal. Patients with cardiac myxoma can be treated only by surgical removal. This study summarizes our experience over 22 years with these tumors. Methods: Fifty seven patients (M/F: 14/43, age: 57.9 ± 14.6 years) with cardiac myxomas underwent surgical resection at our institution. There were 82.4% left atrial myxomas, 14.0% right atrial myxomas, 3.6% biatrial myxomas. The duration of symptoms prior to surgery ranged from 6 to 1,373 days (median 96 days). The surgical approach comprised complete wide excision. The diagnostic methods, incidence of thromboembolic complications, valve degeneration, surgical repair techniques, recurrence and re-operation were reviewed and the Kaplan-Meier survival curve was calculated. Results: There were no in-hospital deaths. Hospital stay amounted to a mean of 13.7 ± 6.9 days. Late follow-up was available for 54 (94.7%) patients for a median 7.5 years after surgery (23 days to 21.4 years). Fifty two patients are alive, while five patients had died after a mean interval of 6.3 years. Cause of death was cardiac in 40% of the patients (n = 2) and non-cardiac in the other 60% (n = 3). Conclusions: Surgical excision of cardiac myxoma carries a low operative risk and gives excellent short-term and long-term results. Surgical excision of the tumor appears to be curative, with few recurrences at long-term follow-up. After diagnosis, surgery should be performed urgently, in order to prevent complications such as embolic events or obstruction of the mitral orifice. Follow-up examination, including echocardiography, should be performed regularly

The Effect of Adding Low-Dose Naloxone to Intrathecal Morphine on Postoperative Pain and Morphine Related Side Effects after Cesarean Section: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Clinical Trial

BACKGROUND: Nowadays, spinal anaesthesia is a suitable choice for most elective and emergency cesarean section (C-section) deliveries. AIM: This study aimed to determine the effect of adding low-dose naloxone to intrathecal morphine on postoperative pain and morphine related side effects after C-section. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In the present double-blind, randomised clinical trial, 70 women aged over 18 years, who were candidates for elective medical C-section under spinal anaesthesia were selected and randomly assigned to either the study group or the control group. For spinal anaesthesia, 10 mg of Bupivacaine plus 100 μg of morphine was administered for all patients. However, patients in the study group received 20 µg of naloxone intrathecally; but the patients in the control group only received normal saline as a placebo. After surgery, patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pump with paracetamol (Apotel®) was connected to each patient. The intensity of postoperative pain in the patients was evaluated and recorded using Visual Acuity Screening (VAS) at 2, 4, 6 and 24 hours after the surgery. The patients were also examined for postoperative nausea and pruritus. RESULTS: Regardless of the groups to which the patients were assigned, a significant difference in pain intensity was observed during the study period (time effect; p < 0.001). Although the intensity of pain was lower in the study group, the difference was not statistically significant (group effect; p = 0.84). Also, there was no group time interaction between pain intensity and the times studied (p = 0.61). The incidence rates of postoperative nausea and pruritus were significantly lower in the study group compared to the control group (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: According to the results of this study, adding low dose naloxone to intrathecal morphine did not significantly change postoperative pain intensity in the patients undergone elective C-section using spinal anaesthesia; however, significantly decreased the severity of postoperative nausea and pruritus

Anomalous Origin and Retropulmonary Course of an Atherosclerotic Stenosed Left Circumflex Coronary Artery

We here present the case of a rarely seen anomalous origin and retropulmonary course of the left circumflex artery from the proximal right coronary artery. The patient suffered from coronary ischemia due to stenotic lesions both in the aberrant circumflex coronary artery and in the first and second diagonal branches. Coronary bypass operation was performed

Evaluating the Rate of Violence Against Pre-hospital Emergency Personnel; a Cross-sectional Study

مقدمه: خشونت در محل کار یک مشکل جهانی با شیوع رو به افزایش میباشد. تمام پرسنل درمانی در معرض خشونت قرار دارند اما با توجه به شرایط خاص اورژانس پیش بیمارستانی ، این افراد، در معرض خشونت محل کار بیشتری نسبت به کارکنان سایر بخشهای درمانی قرار دارند. روش کار: این مطالعه از نوع مقطعی و جامعه مورد مطالعه کارکنان بخش فوریت پزشکی استان آذربایجان شرقی بود. روش نمونه گیری به صورت نمونه گیری تصادفی ساده انجام گرفت. نتایج: در مجموع از تعداد ۷۷ نفر شرکت کننده، تمام افراد از جنس مرد بودند. متوسط سن شرکت کنندگان 5/7 ± 4/34 سال و متوسط سابقه کار 7/5 ± 6/9 سال بود. بیش از نیمی از پرسنل اورژانس پیش بیمارستانی طی یکسال گذشته، دو یا بیش از ۲ بار در هفته مورد آزار بیمار قرار گرفته بودند و در ۵/۳۲ درصد موارد پرسنل تکنسین اورژانس پیش بیمارستانی توسط همراه بیمار مورد آزار قرار گرفته بودند. نتیجه گیری: میزان خشونت علیه تکنسین های عملیاتی فوریت پزشکی بالاست.Introduction: Workplace violence is a global problem the prevalence of which is increasing. All healthcare personnel are subject to violence, but considering the special conditions of pre-hospital emergency, its personnel are exposed to a higher rate of workplace violence compared to other healthcare workers. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study and the study population consisted of pre-hospital emergency personnel of East-Azerbaijan province, Iran. The sampling method was simple random sampling. Results:  A total of 77 participants were included all of whom were male. The average age of the participants was 34.4 ± 7.5 years and their average work experience was 9.58 ± 5.7 years. More than half of the pre-hospital emergency personnel had faced violence by patients twice a week or more throughout the previous year. In 32.5% of the cases, pre-hospital emergency medical technicians had experienced violence by a patient’s friend or relative. Conclusion: The rate of violence against pre-hospital emergency medical technicians is high

Evaluation of an arterial blood sampling device and its function in accelerating and facilitating blood sampling

Background: Arterial blood sampling is among the basic standards in critically ill patients. The aim of this study was to examine an inventive sampling device in facilitating arterial blood sampling in comparison to the conventional method using an insulin syringe.Methods and materials: This randomized interventional clinical trial was performed on 100 patients admitted to Qaem and Imam Reza Hospitals in Mashhad in 2016 for whom two arterial blood gas (ABG) samples were indicated. The patients were randomly selected by the visiting operator on a daily basis. The operator visited the hospital on certain days and took two samples from the selected patients.Results: The patients' mean age was 45.31±16.15 years. In the insulin syringe group, venous blood gas sampling was in 24% and arterial sample in 76%. In the designed device group, same figures were 12.1% and 87.9%, respectively. Sampling score (p=0.01), unsuccessful attempts with and without needle removal from the skin (p=0.01), and need for vertical and horizontal needle displacement for sampling (p=0.01) were significantly differed between the two groups. Localized swelling score and its size, localized bruising, palpable arterial spasm and the spasm duration was significantly less for the inventive device (p<0.05). Satisfaction score of patients and operator were significantly higher in the device group (p=0.01).Conclusion: The study device had desirable function in facilitating and accelerating arterial blood sampling. Its application can be further approved by future studies.Keywords: Arterial blood sampling, Facilitated sampling, Accelerated sampling, Intensive Care Uni

Mid-term results of a modified arterial switch operation using the direct reconstruction technique of the pulmonary artery

Background: There is ongoing discussion as to whether it is beneficial to avoid pulmonary sinus augmentation in the arterial switch operation. We report a single-surgeon series of mid-term results for direct pulmonary artery anastomosis during switch operation for transposition of the great arteries (TGA). Methods: This retrospective study includes 17 patients with TGA, combined with an atrial septal defect, patent foramen ovale or ventricular septal defect. Patient data was analyzed from hospital charts, including operative reports, post-operative course, and regular follow-up investigations. The protocol included cardiological examination by a single pediatric cardiologist. Echocardiographic examinations were performed immediately after arrival on the intensive unit, before discharge, and then after three, six, and 12 months, followed by yearly intervals. Pulmonary artery stenosis (PAS) was categorized into three groups according to the Doppler-measured pulmonary gradient: grade I (trivial stenosis) = increased pulmonary flow with a gradient below 25 mm Hg; grade II (moderate stenosis) = a gradient ranging from 25 to 49 mm Hg; and grade III (severe stenosis) = a gradient above 50 mm Hg. Follow-up data was available for all patients. The length of follow-up ranged from 1.2 to 9.7 years, median: 7.5 years (mean 6.1 years ± 14 months). Results: During follow-up, 12 patients (70.6%) had no (or only trivial) PAS, five patients (29.4%) had moderate stenosis without progress, and no patient had severe PAS. Cardiac catheterization after arterial switch operation was performed in 11 patients (64.7%) and showed a good correlation with echocardiographic findings. During follow-up there was no reintervention for PAS. Conclusions: Direct reconstruction of the neo-pulmonary artery is a good option in TGA with antero-posterior position of the great vessels, with very satisfactory mid-term results. (Cardiol J 2010; 17, 6: 574-579