scholarly journals Rotating Scheimpflug Imaging Indices in Different Grades of Keratoconus

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherine S. Wahba ◽  
Maged M. Roshdy ◽  
Rania S. Elkitkat ◽  
Karim M. Naguib

Purpose. To evaluate accuracy of various Keratoconus (KC) screening indices, in relation to Topographic Keratoconus (TKC) grading.Setting. Al Watany Eye Hospital, Cairo, Egypt.Methods.Data of 103 normal (group 1) and 73 KC eyes (group 2), imaged by Pentacam (branded as Allegro Oculyzer), were analysed.Group 2was divided into2a: 14 eyes (TKC = 1, early KC),2b: 25 eyes (TKC = 1 to 2 or 2, moderate KC), and2c: 34 eyes (TKC = 2 to 3 up to 4, severe KC). Participants were followed up for six years to confirm diagnosis. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) was calculated for evaluated curvature, elevation, and pachymetry indices with various reference shapes at different diameters.Results. When comparing normal to KC eyes, ten indices had significantly higher AUROC. Only five of them had significantly higher AUROC in early KC compared to normal corneas: Pachymetry Progression Index- (PPI-) Maximum (Max), Ambrósio’s Relational Thickness- (ART-) Max, PPI-Max minus PPI-Minimum (Min), central corneal thickness (CCT), and diagonal decentration of thinnest point from the apex (AUROC = 0.690, 0.690, 0.687, 0.683, and 0.674, resp.).Conclusion. Generally, ten pachymetry and elevation-based indices had significantly higher AUROC. Five indices had statistically significant high AUROC when comparing early KC to normal corneas.

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Cavit Ceylan ◽  
Omer Gokhan Doluoglu ◽  
Sedat Yahşi

Objective: The aim of our study was to investigate emphasis of urinary pH in patients with prostate cancer. Methods: Patients, who underwent 12-core prostate biopsy because of prostate-specific antigen elevation and suspicious digital rectal examination, were retrospectively reviewed. According to pathology, patients with prostate cancer were classified as group 1, and patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia were classified as group 2. Primary endpoint of this study was the urine pH. The age of two groups and urine pH were compared with each other. Student t test and Mann–Whitney U test were used for the intergroup analysis of continuous variables. A cut-off value for urine pH was determined with a receiver operating characteristic curve. p < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: There were 119 patients in group 1 and 99 patients in group 2. When urine pHs of both groups were compared, group 1 and group 2 were 5.1 ± 0.45 and 5.5 ± 0.79, respectively (p = 0.0001). The cut-off value determined by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis for urine pH was 5.2 (sensitivity: 42%, specificity: 79%, area under the curve: 0.61; 95% CI: [0.53, 0.68]; p = 0.003). Conclusion: Acidic urine pH may be important for predicting prostate cancer according to this study.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 221-228
Author(s):  
Shahab Hajibandeh ◽  
Shahin Hajibandeh ◽  
Nicholas Hobbs ◽  
Jigar Shah ◽  
Matthew Harris ◽  
...  

Aims To investigate whether an intraperitoneal contamination index (ICI) derived from combined preoperative levels of C-reactive protein, lactate, neutrophils, lymphocytes and albumin could predict the extent of intraperitoneal contamination in patients with acute abdominal pathology. Methods Patients aged over 18 who underwent emergency laparotomy for acute abdominal pathology between January 2014 and October 2018 were randomly divided into primary and validation cohorts. The proposed intraperitoneal contamination index was calculated for each patient in each cohort. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was performed to determine discrimination of the index and cut-off values of preoperative intraperitoneal contamination index that could predict the extent of intraperitoneal contamination. Results Overall, 468 patients were included in this study; 234 in the primary cohort and 234 in the validation cohort. The analyses identified intraperitoneal contamination index of 24.77 and 24.32 as cut-off values for purulent contamination in the primary cohort (area under the curve (AUC): 0.73, P < 0.0001; sensitivity: 84%, specificity: 60%) and validation cohort (AUC: 0.83, P < 0.0001; sensitivity: 91%, specificity: 69%), respectively. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis also identified intraperitoneal contamination index of 33.70 and 33.41 as cut-off values for feculent contamination in the primary cohort (AUC: 0.78, P < 0.0001; sensitivity: 87%, specificity: 64%) and validation cohort (AUC: 0.79, P < 0.0001; sensitivity: 86%, specificity: 73%), respectively. Conclusions As a predictive measure which is derived purely from biomarkers, intraperitoneal contamination index may be accurate enough to predict the extent of intraperitoneal contamination in patients with acute abdominal pathology and to facilitate decision-making together with clinical and radiological findings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Mi ◽  
Pengfei Qu ◽  
Na Guo ◽  
Ruimiao Bai ◽  
Jiayi Gao ◽  
...  

Abstract Background For most women who have had a previous cesarean section, vaginal birth after cesarean section (VBAC) is a reasonable and safe choice, but which will increase the risk of adverse outcomes such as uterine rupture. In order to reduce the risk, we evaluated the factors that may affect VBAC and and established a model for predicting the success rate of trial of the labor after cesarean section (TOLAC). Methods All patients who gave birth at Northwest Women’s and Children’s Hospital from January 2016 to December 2018, had a history of cesarean section and voluntarily chose the TOLAC were recruited. Among them, 80% of the population was randomly assigned to the training set, while the remaining 20% were assigned to the external validation set. In the training set, univariate and multivariate logistic regression models were used to identify indicators related to successful TOLAC. A nomogram was constructed based on the results of multiple logistic regression analysis, and the selected variables included in the nomogram were used to predict the probability of successfully obtaining TOLAC. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was used to judge the predictive ability of the model. Results A total of 778 pregnant women were included in this study. Among them, 595 (76.48%) successfully underwent TOLAC, whereas 183 (23.52%) failed and switched to cesarean section. In multi-factor logistic regression, parity = 1, pre-pregnancy BMI < 24 kg/m2, cervical score ≥ 5, a history of previous vaginal delivery and neonatal birthweight < 3300 g were associated with the success of TOLAC. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in the prediction and validation models was 0.815 (95% CI: 0.762–0.854) and 0.730 (95% CI: 0.652–0.808), respectively, indicating that the nomogram prediction model had medium discriminative power. Conclusion The TOLAC was useful to reducing the cesarean section rate. Being primiparous, not overweight or obese, having a cervical score ≥ 5, a history of previous vaginal delivery or neonatal birthweight < 3300 g were protective indicators. In this study, the validated model had an approving predictive ability.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (Supplement_2) ◽  
Author(s):  
F Kahles ◽  
R.W Mertens ◽  
M.V Rueckbeil ◽  
M.C Arrivas ◽  
J Moellmann ◽  
...  

Abstract Background GLP-1 and GLP-2 (glucagon-like peptide-1/2) are gut derived hormones that are co-secreted from intestinal L-cells in response to food intake. While GLP-1 is known to induce postprandial insulin secretion, GLP-2 enhances intestinal nutrient absorption and is clinically used for the treatment of patients with short bowel syndrome. The relevance of the GLP-2 system for cardiovascular disease is unknown. Purpose The aim of this study was to assess the predictive capacity of GLP-2 for cardiovascular prognosis in patients with myocardial infarction. Methods Total GLP-2 levels, NT-proBNP concentrations and the Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) score were assessed at time of admission in 918 patients with myocardial infarction, among them 597 patients with NSTEMI and 321 with STEMI. The primary composite outcome of the study was the first occurrence of cardiovascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke (3-P-MACE) with a median follow-up of 311 days. Results Kaplan-Meier survival plots (separated by the median of GLP-2 with a cut-off value of 4.4 ng/mL) and univariable cox regression analyses found GLP-2 values to be associated with adverse outcome (logarithmized GLP-2 values HR: 2.87; 95% CI: 1.75–4.68; p&lt;0.0001). Further adjustment for age, sex, smoking, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes mellitus, family history of cardiovascular disease, hs-Troponin T, NT-proBNP and hs-CRP levels did not affect the association of GLP-2 with poor prognosis (logarithmized GLP-2 values HR: 2.96; 95% CI: 1.38–6.34; p=0.0053). Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analyses illustrated that GLP-2 is a strong indicator for cardiovascular events and proved to be comparable to other established risk markers (area under the curve of the combined endpoint at 6 months; GLP-2: 0.72; hs-Troponin: 0.56; NT-proBNP: 0.70; hs-CRP: 0.62). Adjustment of the GRACE risk estimate by GLP-2 increased the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve for the combined triple endpoint after 6 months from 0.70 (GRACE) to 0.75 (GRACE + GLP-2) in NSTEMI patients. Addition of GLP-2 to a model containing GRACE and NT-proBNP led to a further improvement in model performance (increase in AUC from 0.72 for GRACE + NT-proBNP to 0.77 for GRACE + NT-proBNP + GLP-2). Conclusions In patients admitted with acute myocardial infarction, GLP-2 levels are associated with adverse cardiovascular prognosis. This demonstrates a strong yet not appreciated crosstalk between the heart and the gut with relevance for cardiovascular outcome. Future studies are needed to further explore this crosstalk with the possibility of new treatment avenues for cardiovascular disease. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main funding source(s): German Society of Cardiology (DGK), German Research Foundation (DFG)


2021 ◽  
pp. 096228022199595
Author(s):  
Yalda Zarnegarnia ◽  
Shari Messinger

Receiver operating characteristic curves are widely used in medical research to illustrate biomarker performance in binary classification, particularly with respect to disease or health status. Study designs that include related subjects, such as siblings, usually have common environmental or genetic factors giving rise to correlated biomarker data. The design could be used to improve detection of biomarkers informative of increased risk, allowing initiation of treatment to stop or slow disease progression. Available methods for receiver operating characteristic construction do not take advantage of correlation inherent in this design to improve biomarker performance. This paper will briefly review some developed methods for receiver operating characteristic curve estimation in settings with correlated data from case–control designs and will discuss the limitations of current methods for analyzing correlated familial paired data. An alternative approach using conditional receiver operating characteristic curves will be demonstrated. The proposed approach will use information about correlation among biomarker values, producing conditional receiver operating characteristic curves that evaluate the ability of a biomarker to discriminate between affected and unaffected subjects in a familial paired design.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 2750-2766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Jacqmin-Gadda ◽  
Paul Blanche ◽  
Emilie Chary ◽  
Célia Touraine ◽  
Jean-François Dartigues

Semicompeting risks and interval censoring are frequent in medical studies, for instance when a disease may be diagnosed only at times of visit and disease onset is in competition with death. To evaluate the ability of markers to predict disease onset in this context, estimators of discrimination measures must account for these two issues. In recent years, methods for estimating the time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve and the associated area under the ROC curve have been extended to account for right censored data and competing risks. In this paper, we show how an approximation allows to use the inverse probability of censoring weighting estimator for semicompeting events with interval censored data. Then, using an illness-death model, we propose two model-based estimators allowing to rigorously handle these issues. The first estimator is fully model based whereas the second one only uses the model to impute missing observations due to censoring. A simulation study shows that the bias for inverse probability of censoring weighting remains modest and may be less than the one of the two parametric estimators when the model is misspecified. We finally recommend the nonparametric inverse probability of censoring weighting estimator as main analysis and the imputation estimator based on the illness-death model as sensitivity analysis.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document