Qualitative diagnosis of benign breast lesions and breast carcinoma with elastographic ultrasonic imaging.

PURPOSE: To investigate the efficacy of ultrasonic elastography in the qualitative diagnosis of malignant and benign breast tumors. METHODS: The study included 200 female patients with benign (n=100) and breast carcinomas (n=100) treated between January 2015 and March 2017. Each patient underwent ultrasonic elastography before surgery and registration of the hardness score and lesion area diameter. Postoperatively the diagnosis was pathologically confirmed. RESULTS: The hardness scores of the benign group were below 3 points while in the malignant group was above 2 points (p <0.05). The average scores of the benign and breast carcinoma groups were 2.4±1.1 and 4.3±0.7 points, respectively. The lesion areas of the malignant group were 2.44 ± 1.63 cm2 and of the benign group 1.03 ± 1.01 cm2 (p <0.05). The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and area under the curve (AUC) of ultrasonic elastography in the qualitative diagnosis of breast carcinoma were 86.73, 88.62, 84.47, 87.20, 86.14% and 91%, respectively. CONCLUSION: In the qualitative diagnosis of benign and breast carcinomas, ultrasonic elastography can contribute to the accurate diagnosis of the disease and can be used with success in clinical practice.

Evaluation of changes in left ventricular structure and function in hypertensive patients with coronary artery disease after PCI using real-time three-dimensional echocardiography.

We aimed to evaluate the changes in left ventricular structure and function in hypertensive patients with coronary artery disease before and after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) using real-time three-dimensional echocardiography. Two hundred and eighty hypertensive patients with coronary artery disease undergoing PCI and 120 cases who did not receive PCI in our hospital were selected as the subjects of our study. All patients were administered with routine antiplatelet, anticoagulant, lipid-lowering, antihypertensive, dilating coronary artery and other medications. The left ventricular systolic function and systolic synchrony index changes before and after subjects were treated by PCI were analyzed using three-dimensional echocardiography. At 2 days before surgery, there were no significant differences in the left ventricular end-diastolic volume, left ventricular end-systolic volume (LVESV) and ejection fraction (EF) between the two patient groups (P>0.05). At 3 months and 9 months, the two key time points after PCI, the LVESV level in the PCI group was distinctly decreased, while EF was significantly increased (P<0.05). In addition, before treatment, there were no significant differences in the parameters of time from the corresponding segment of the myocardium to the minimal systolic volume in two patient groups, such as Tmsv-16SD, Tmsv-16Dif, Tmsv-12SD, Tmsv-12Dif, Tmsv-6SD and Tmsv-6Dif (P>0.05); however, the parameters of time from the corresponding segment of the myocardium to the minimal systolic volume in patients in the PCI group were significantly reduced at 3 and 9 months after surgery (P<0.05). Three-dimensional echocardiography can evaluate the critical parameters in the prognosis of hypertensive patients with coronary artery disease after PCI accurately and in real-time, which may play a significant role.