Effect of prostate and bony pelvic dimensions measured by preoperative magnetic resonance imaging on robot-assisted radical prostatectomy.

Bone pelvic dimensions and body habitus may have effects on robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP). In this study, we examined the effects of body mass index, bone pelvis measurements and prostate measurements on console time (CT), decrease in postoperative hemogram level (DHL) and surgical margin(SM) in patients who underwent RARP for clinically localized prostate cancer in our institution. The data of transperitoneal RARP cases performed by a single surgeon between November 2016 and August 2020 were analyzed retrospectively. It was included in 125 patients who met the study criteria. Bone and soft tissue measurements were made on magnetic resonance imaging T2-weighted imaging in the mid-sagittal and transvers plane. In multivariate linear regression analyzes, only soft tissue width/transverse diameter of the prostate and CT were found to be correlated (p = 0.026). For the DHL, no pelvic dimension and body habitus had a significant association on multivariate linear regression analysis. In multivariate analyzes, a statistically significant difference was found only between pathological Gleason Score and SM (p = 0.008). Although we found statistically significant associations between prostate diameters and pelvic bone measurements and operative difficulties, we believe that further studies are needed to confirm these results. Such information can help identify patients with challenging anatomy and can be used in robotic surgery training to achieve optimal patient outcomes after RARP.

Effects of Listening to Binaural Beats on Anxiety Levels and Pain Scores in Male Patients Undergoing Cystoscopy and Ureteral Stent Removal: A Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial.

Purpose: To investigate the effects of pure binaural beats on anxiety and pain scores in male patients undergoing diagnostic cystoscopy (DC) and ureteral stent removal (USR) under local anesthesia. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective, randomized placebo-controlled study. Patients in the DC group (DCG) and USR group (USRG) were divided into three subgroups according to interventions applied; DCG-1 and USRG-1, patients listened to binaural beats; DCG-2 and USRG-2, patients listened to classical music; and DCG-3 and USRG-3, patients wore headphones, but were not exposed to audio (control group). The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) were used for measuring anxiety and pain scores, respectively. Demographic data, initial STAI, tolerance rate of interventions, terminal STAI (STAI-T), differences of STAI (delta STAI, STAI-D), and VAS scores were compared. Results: Between July 2019 and March 2020, a total of 252 and 159 eligible male patients for DCG and USRG were included, respectively. After exclusions, remaining patients were DCG-1, n = 61; DCG-2, n = 73; DCG-3, n = 75; USRG-1, n = 41; USRG-2, n = 50; and USRG-3, n = 52. The tolerance rate in binaural beat groups was significantly lower than in other groups (p < 0.05 for all). There were significant decreases in terms of STAI-T when DCG-1 and DCG-2 were compared with DCG-3 and USRG-1 and USRG-2 were compared with USRG-3 (p < 0.05 for all). There were significant decreases in STAI-D scores when DCG-1 and DCG-2 were compared with DCG-3 and when USRG-1 and USRG-2 were compared with USRG-3 (p < 0.001 for all). Binaural beat groups had significantly lower VAS scores than other groups and classical music groups had significantly lower VAS scores than control groups (p < 0.05 for all). Conclusions: Listening to pure binaural beats may be a simple and effective method to reduce anxiety levels and pain scores associated with the DC and USR procedures in males.

Preoperative Inflammation Markers and De Ritis Ratio in Predicting Clinical Presentation and Prognosis of Patients with Testicular Germ Cell Tumors.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the importance of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), neutrophil-to-monocyte ratio (NMR) and De Ritis ratio (DRR) in predicting clinical presentation and prognosis of patients with testicular germ cell tumors (TGCTs). STUDY DESIGN: Observational study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Antalya Training and Research Hospital Antalya, Turkey, from January 2009 to March 2020. METHODOLOGY: The characteristics and the results of biochemical and pathological examinations of patients who underwent radical orchiectomy were recorded. NLR, LMR, PLR, NMR, and DRR were calculated. The relationship among inflammation markers and DRR and clinical presentation and prognosis of TGCT was evaluated. RESULTS: Data of 99 patients were eligible for the study. Median age was 32 (27-39)  years. Average size of the tumor was 5 (2.7 - 7) cm. Average duration of follow-up was 35.4 (8-62) months. Higher NLR and lower LMR were significantly correlated with higher rates of advanced-stage cancer, metastasis, and retroperitoneal lymph node invasion (RPLNI) (p<0.05). Based on the optimal cut-off values, there was a significantly higher rate of S stage, RPLNI, and metastatic disease in the high NLR group (p<0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis found a statistically significantly lower mean survival rate in the high NLR group (p<0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between the DRR groups in the above-mentioned parameters (p>0.05). CONCLUSION: Preoperative NLR can be used as an inexpensive and easily accessible marker to predict clinical presentation at diagnosis and mortality rates during follow-up of patients with TGCT. Preoperative LMR can also be associated with the clinical picture at the time of diagnosis of TGCT. Key Words: De ritis ratio, Lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio, Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, Neutrophil-to-monocyte ratio, Platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio, Testicular  germ cell tumor.

Sampling strategy for the sparse recovery of infrared images.

The compressive sensing (CS) framework states that a signal that has a sparse representation in a known basis may be reconstructed from samples obtained at a sub-Nyquist sampling rate. The Fourier domain is widely used in CS applications due to its inherent properties. Sparse signal recovery applications using a small number of Fourier transform coefficients have made solutions to large-scale data recovery problems, including image recovery problems, more practical. The sparse reconstruction of 2D images is performed using the sampling patterns generated by taking the general frequency characteristics of the images into account. In this work, instead of forming a general sampling pattern for infrared (IR) images, a special sampling pattern is obtained by gathering a database to extract the frequency characteristics of IR sea-surveillance images. Experimental results show that the proposed sampling pattern provides better sparse recovery results compared to the widely used patterns proposed in the literature. It is also shown that, together with a certain image dataset, the sampling pattern generated by the proposed scheme can be generalized for various image sparse recovery applications.