This study aimed to compare the safety and efficacy of laser lithotripsy and pneumatic lithotripsy, the two most commonly used transurethral lithotripsy methods for treating bladder stones in children in Iraq. Between January 2013 and December 2016, 64 children with bladder stones were included in this prospective randomized study, after ethical committee approval and written consent from the children’s parents or caregivers were obtained. Patients were assigned randomly by computer software to two groups treated with either pneumatic cystolithotripsy or laser lithotripsy. A 9 Fr. semirigid ureteroscope was used to pass the lithotripter through and fragment the stone. A catheter of 8–12 Fr. was then introduced and kept in place for 24 h. All children were hospitalized for 24 h, and the catheter was removed the next morning. Outpatient follow-up was maintained for 6–12 months. In terms of operation outcomes and complications, the laser lithotripsy group had a significantly longer duration of operation (74.5 ± 26.6 min vs. 51.5 ± 17.2 min, p = 0.001), whereas the number of patients requiring an extended hospital stay was significantly higher in the pneumatic lithotripsy group (48.5% vs. 16.1%, p = 0.006). Moreover, pneumatic lithotripsy was associated with a significantly greater risk of having at least one adverse effect (64% greater than that in the laser group). Stone clearance rates did not significantly differ between treatment groups. In conclusion, both pneumatic and laser lithotripters can be used to treat children with bladder stones with high efficacy and safety.
In this study, a fast block matching search algorithm based on blocks' descriptors and multilevel blocks filtering is introduced. The used descriptors are the mean and a set of centralized low order moments. Hierarchal filtering and MAE similarity measure were adopted to nominate the best similar blocks lay within the pool of neighbor blocks. As next step to blocks nomination the similarity of the mean and moments is used to classify the nominated blocks and put them in one of three sub-pools, each one represents certain nomination priority level (i.e., most, less & least level). The main reason of the introducing nomination and classification steps is a significant reduction in the number of matching instances of the pixels belong to the c
... Show MoreIntroduction: The study was intended for Roseomonas gilardii NTCC 13290 strain pigment extraction and characterization. Methodology: The pigment-producing bacterial were cultured on Columbia blood agar and nutrient media agar. Then the pigments were extracted by ethanol. The candidate pigment was further characterized by different biotechnological techniques: UV-Vis spectroscopy, FT-IR to analyze the functional group of the targeted pigment, and TLC media. Results: The cultivation of Roseomonas gilardii on media showed pink color and nearly runny texture. The bacterial colonies were microscopically gram stained and examined, the R. gilardii was seen as coccobacillus colonies that mostly form pairs arranged as short chains. The R. gilardii b
... Show MoreA series of liquid crystals comprising a heterocyclics dihydro pyrrole and 1,2,3-triazole rings [VII]-[X] were synthesized by many steps starting from a reaction of 3,3'-dimethyl-[1,1'-biphenyl]- 4,4'-diamine with chloroacetyl chloride in a mixture of solutions DMF and TEA to synthesise the compounds [I], then the compounds [I] reacted with malononitrile in 1,4-dioxane and TEA solutions to produce compounds [II], then the first step is repeated with compound [II] where it reacted with chloroacetyl chloride in mixture of DMF and TEA to give compound [III], this compound reacted with sodium azide in the presence of sodium chloride and DMF as solvent to produce the compound [IV], which reacted with acrylic acid by a 1.3 dipolar reaction in sol
... Show MoreTo maintain the security and integrity of data, with the growth of the Internet and the increasing prevalence of transmission channels, it is necessary to strengthen security and develop several algorithms. The substitution scheme is the Playfair cipher. The traditional Playfair scheme uses a small 5*5 matrix containing only uppercase letters, making it vulnerable to hackers and cryptanalysis. In this study, a new encryption and decryption approach is proposed to enhance the resistance of the Playfair cipher. For this purpose, the development of symmetric cryptography based on shared secrets is desired. The proposed Playfair method uses a 5*5 keyword matrix for English and a 6*6 keyword matrix for Arabic to encrypt the alphabets of
... Show MoreHigh performance work systems and general industrial enterprise performance
Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a significant cause of visual impairment; many diabetics do not have regular eye examinations, although it is known that early diagnosis and reduces the risk of blindness. There were many barriers that prevent diabetics from attending eye clinics.
Objectives: To assess knowledge, and practice about ocular complications among diabetic patients and to determine barriers preventing the diabetic patients annual visual checking
Methods: A cross-sectional study involving the interview was conducted among 300 diabetic patients attending out patient in Ibn Al Haitham Teaching Ophthalmology Hospital between November 2017 and June 2018.
... Show MoreWireless channels are typically much more noisy than wired links and subjected to fading due to multipath propagation which result in ISI and hence high error rate. Adaptive modulation is a powerful technique to improve the tradeoff between spectral efficiency and Bit Error Rate (BER). In order to adjust the transmission rate, channel state information (CSI) is required at the transmitter side.
In this paper the performance enhancement of using linear prediction along with channel estimation to track the channel variations and adaptive modulation were examined. The simulation results shows that the channel estimation is sufficient for low Doppler frequency shifts (<30 Hz), while channel prediction is much more suited at
... Show More