https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114617

Current perspective in metal oxide based photocatalysts for virus disinfection: A review

Obturator hernias (OH) are extremely rare hernias, accounting for 0.07–1% of all hernias. This is the first systematic review investigating their presentation, imaging, treatment outcomes, and recurrence rate. After a detailed search in electronic search engines, 74 studies matched our criteria. A review of these reports was conducted and the full texts were examined. A total of 146 patients with a mean age of 78.8 years were included in our analysis, with 40.1%, 29.9%, and 25.2% of patients suffering from either a right, a left or bilateral OH, respectively. OH were associated with non-specific symptoms and signs; bowel obstruction being the most common. Howship–Romberg sign was present in 56.2% of patients. Computed tomography (CT) scan was the most frequently used diagnostic modality, inversely associated with perioperative mortality. Mesh repair demonstrated a significantly improved perioperative morbidity rate, compared with non-mesh repair. Approximately 30% of patients underwent a laparoscopic operation, which was associated with significantly decreased morbidity and mortality rate as well as length of hospital stay, compared with the open repair. OHs are not associated with specific symptoms and signs; thus, they constitute a diagnostic challenge, requiring a high level of clinical suspicion. Undoubtedly, CT scan of the abdomen is the gold standard diagnostic tool. Their operative repair is mandatory, with the laparoscopic approach demonstrating significant advantages over the open repair.

Obturator hernias: a systematic review of the literature

Sacral insufficiency fractures (SIF) are a common and often underdiagnosed source of low back pain. In patients with SIF, there is both a compromised sacroiliac joint and weakened sacrum, resulting in decreased resistance to torsional stress, leading to fracture. While conservative medical management is a safe option, minimally invasive intervention may provide improved short and long-term relief of low back pain in patients presenting with SIF. This comprehensive review is undertaken to provide an update to the current understanding of SIF with description of risk factors, clinical presentation, and management. Sacroplasty is a minimally invasive procedure in which polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) cement is inserted into bone to improve its structural integrity and alleviate symptoms. Balloon sacroplasty (BSP) has also been successful in alleviating pain with minimal cement leakage in SIF patients. Various other interventional techniques, including navigation-assisted screw fixation have been used to address SIF and have shown improvement in pain with minimal side effects. This review included various modalities of treatments available to manage SIF. This review shows that in comparison with nonsurgical management, sacroplasty has been shown to have greater pain reduction and improved mobility.

Sacral Insufficiency Fractures: a Review of Risk Factors, Clinical Presentation, and Management.

Background: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a global threat impacting the lives of millions of people worldwide. Automated detection of lung infections from Computed Tomography scans represents an excellent alternative; however, segmenting infected regions from CT slices encounters many challenges. Objective: Developing a diagnosis system based on deep learning techniques to detect and quantify COVID-19 infection and pneumonia screening using CT imaging. Method: Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization pre-processing method was used to remove the noise and intensity in homogeneity. Black slices were also removed to crop only the region of interest containing the lungs. A U-net architecture, based on CNN encoder and CNN decoder approaches, is then introduced for a fast and precise image segmentation to obtain the lung and infection segmentation models. For better estimation of skill on unseen data, a fourfold cross-validation as a resampling procedure has been used. A three-layered CNN architecture, with additional fully connected layers followed by a Softmax layer, was used for classification. Lung and infection volumes have been reconstructed to allow volume ratio computing and obtain infection rate. Results: Starting with the 20 CT scan cases, data has been divided into 70% for the training dataset and 30% for the validation dataset. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed system achieves a dice score of 0.98 and 0.91 for the lung and infection segmentation tasks, respectively, and an accuracy of 0.98 for the classification task. Conclusions: The proposed workflow aimed at obtaining good performances for the different system’s components, and at the same time, dealing with reduced datasets used for training.

/pdf/a-deep-learning-based-diagnosis-system-for-covid-19-3gps68f9.pdf

A Deep Learning-Based Diagnosis System for COVID-19 Detection and Pneumonia Screening Using CT Imaging

Cardiovascular diseases are leading cause of death worldwide. Timely and accurate detection of disease is required to reduce load on healthcare system and number of deaths. For this, accurate and f...

Encoder Modified U-Net and Feature Pyramid Network for Multi-class Segmentation of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Images

SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis using medical imaging techniques and artificial intelligence: A review.

https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1049/ipr2.12165

A review of approaches investigated for right ventricular segmentation using short-axis cardiac MRI

Obturator hernia is rare. It occurs when part of the pelvic contents protrude through the obturator foramen. It is a diagnostic challenge in the emergency department since the signs and symptoms are non-specific. It often occurs in elderly, emaciated and chronically ill women. The clinical picture include intestinal obstruction with abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. The treatment is only surgical. Delayed diagnosis of this condition usually leads to a high mortality rate. We report the case of an 83-year-old woman with a strangulated obturator hernia. The hernia was discovered early by computed tomography and was treated by emergency laparotomy. We emphasize on the rule of CT scan to establishing a prompt preoperative diagnosis of an obturator hernia, appropriate planning of surgical intervention and thus optimizing the outcome.

Strangulated obturator hernia: a case report with literature review.

Human cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a worldwide parasitic infection in which the larval cysts of Echinococcus granulosus develop in some tissue or organ, very often in the liver and/or the lungs. On very rare occasions, a cyst may be found inside the pulmonary artery, the result of the rupture of an intracardiac cyst or, more rarely, dissemination from a hepatic infection (Bulman et al., 2007). Most cysts in the pulmonary artery have only been detected at autopsy (Gilsanz et al., 1977). Surgery is usually the therapeutic approach of choice.

Two Tunisian patients with Echinococcus-attributable pulmonary embolism, as a rare complication after the surgical removal of a hepatic cyst (Case 1) or a cardiac cyst (Case 2) are described below. In both cases, who presented at the Fattouma Bourguiba University Hospital in Monastir, diagnosis was based on medical history and imaging features and chemotherapy led to a good outcome.

/pdf/pulmonary-embolism-in-echinococcosis-two-case-reports-and-2jz6ik0vpn.pdf

Pulmonary embolism in echinococcosis: two case reports and literature review.

Mucoceles are slow-growing paranasal sinus cystic masses whose clinical presentation varies according to the affected sinus. Diagnosis is often radiological, based essentially on CT scan. The aim of this work was to study the radiologic characteristics of mucoceles on CT scan and MRI. We conducted a retrospective study of patients with mucoceles explored by imaging and operated on in our department. In our series, fronto-ethmoidal sinuses were the most frequently affected (81%). Facial scan confirmed the diagnosis in the majority of cases. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed in 4 cases. Eleven patients were operated on by endonasal approach, three by external approach and one by combined surgical approach. Recurrence was observed in two patients after an average delay of 24 months. CT scan is considered the method of choice in the investigation of mucoceles. MRI is indicated in some cases to assess any orbital or intracranial extension.

Badii Hmida

Papers

SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis using medical imaging techniques and artificial intelligence: A review.

A review of approaches investigated for right ventricular segmentation using short-axis cardiac MRI

Strangulated obturator hernia: a case report with literature review.

Pulmonary embolism in echinococcosis: two case reports and literature review.

The role of imaging in the management of sinonasal mucoceles.