Outcome determinants of urethroplasty in the management of inflammatory anterior urethral strictures

Published ArticleBackground. Limited data are available on outcomes of the surgical management of inflammatory urethral strictures secondary to infection, a major cause of stricture. Several shortcomings that need to be addressed have been identified in the past. Objective. To determine the impact of stricture length, position and degree of obliterative urethral lumen on the surgical outcomes of corrective procedures for inflammatory anterior urethral strictures. Methods. This retrospective analysis used the records of patients who presented with proven infective anterior urethral strictures at an academic hospital from 2007 to 2010. All patients were followed up after 48 months. Urethroplasty outcomes were analysed according to stricture location and length and effect of urethral obliteration. Results. The median age of the 174 patients in the study was 47 (range 21 - 86) years. Anastomotic urethroplasty was successful in 59/99 (59.6%) patients. Augmented anastomotic urethroplasty was successful in 11/15 (73.3%) patients. Dorsal onlay buccal mucosa graft urethroplasty was successful in 23/32 (71.9%) patients, significantly higher than in 2/9 (22.2%) patients who underwent ventral onlay buccal mucosa graft urethroplasty (p=0.017; hazard ratio 3.4; 95% confidence interval 1.29 - 9.40). The one-stage circular pedicled penile skin-flap urethroplasty was successful in 1/12 (8.3%) patients. Two-stage urethroplasty was successful in 5/7 (71.4%) patients. A primary component analysis of the 73 failed procedures showed that stricture length was the main contributor to failure (eigenvalue 1.79; 45%). Conclusions. Urethroplasty remains a challenge in inflammatory urethral strictures, where stricture length was the main reason for treatment failure

Quality assessment of estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor testing in breast cancer using a tissue microarray-based approach

Assessing hormone receptor status is an essential part of the breast cancer diagnosis, as this biomarker greatly predicts response to hormonal treatment strategies. As such, hormone receptor testing laboratories are strongly encouraged to participate in external quality control schemes to achieve optimization of their immunohistochemical assays. Nine Dutch pathology departments provided tissue blocks containing invasive breast cancers which were all previously tested for estrogen receptor and/or progesterone receptor expression during routine practice. From these tissue blocks

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

The effect of surface treatment of silica nanoparticles on the breakdown strength of mineral oil

In previous work, the results of AC breakdown tests showed that unmodified silica nanoparticles improve the breakdown strength of mineral oil based nanofluids, especially at a relatively high humidity level of around 25 ppm. It was proposed that, since the hydrophilic surface of unmodified silica nanoparticles can absorb water, this would lead to a reduction of free moisture in the bulk of the oil, which has a strong influence on the breakdown strength. In the present study this proposition is verified, by comparing the breakdown strength of two mineral oil based nanofluids: a reference with unmodified silica nanofluid and a nanofluid with Z-6011 modified silica. The silane coupling agent Z-6011 turns the surface of silica nanoparticles hydrophobic, thus preventing water adsorption

Impurity determination by thermal analysis : I. The melting curve of a gradually frozen sample

A temperature-heat content relation is presented for binary systems which show solid solutions. Contrary to previous equations, the present equation accounts for the very restricted rate of diffusion in the solid. The equation is based on local equilibrium during freezing and melting. The equation obtaining to the comparative method of impurity determination and applicable to a gradually frozen sample is identical to the equation previously derived on the basis of total equilibrium. The corresponding equations of the absolute method differ considerably. Experiments confirm the local equilibrium theory and show the inadequacy of the total equilibrium theory

The vox populi and structural elements of the book of Ezekiel

The authors study the influence of the vox pop~ as expressed by two proverbs (Ez 12:22 and 27; 18:2), on the structure of chapters 12 to 33. They conclude that Ezekiel 33 serves as a conclusion to this section, and forms a bridge to Ezekiel 34 onwards