Objective To investigate the value of contrast-enhanced ultrasonography in detection and diagnosis of small primary liver cancer. Methods SonoVue-enhanced ultrasonography were performed on 353 patients with 378 primary liver cancer, less than 3 cm in diameter. Enhancement patterns and enhancement phases of hepatic lesions on contrast-enhanced ultrasonography were analyzed and compared with the results of histopathology. Results In all hepatic tumors, 96.6% （365/378） lesions enhanced in the arterial phase. Among them, 317 (83.9%) tumors enhanced earlier than liver parenchyma and 48 (12.7%) tumors enhanced synchronously with liver parenchyma, and 342 (90.5%) tumors showed early wash-out in the portal and late phases. With regard to the enhancement pattern, 329 (87.0%) tumors presented whole-lesion enhancement, 35 (9.3%) to be mosaic enhancement and 14 (3.7%) to be rim-like enhancement. If taking the whole-lesion enhancement and mosaic enhancement in arterial phase as diagnotic standard for primary liver cancer on contrast-enhanced ultrasonography, the sensitivity was 92.9%(351/378), and if the earlier or synchronous enhancement of the tumor compared with liver parenchyma in arterial phase and the wash-out in portal phase were regarded as the stardand, the sensitivity was 87.3%(330/378). Conclusion Contrast-enhanced ultrasonography could display real-time enhancement patterns as well as the wash-out processes both in hepatic tumors and the liver parenchyma. It might be of clinical value in diagnosis of primary liver cancer based on the hemodynamics of hepatic tumors on contrast-enhanced ultrasonography.
ObjectiveTo explore the safety and feasibility of contrast enhanced intraoperative ultrasonographyguided percutaneous radiofrequency ablation with artificial hydrothorax to hepatocellular carcinoma in the hepatic dome. MethodsThe clinical data of nine patients with hepatocellular carcinoma in the hepatic dome underwent ultrasonographyguided percutaneous radiofrequnecy ablation with artificial hydrothorax from January 2008 to June 2009 at Department of Hepatobiliopancreatic Surgery of West China Hospital were retrospectively analyzed. The perioperative results and recurrence of tumor were also analyzed. ResultsAll of nine patients with twelve tumors received successfully radiofrequency ablation with artificial hydrothorax of (2 444±464) ml (2 000-3 000 ml). The ablation time was 12-24 min (median 12 min), with an average of (15±5) min for each tumor. No hemothorax, pneumothorax, and death occurred during operation. One patient had ascites of 2 000 ml after ablation due to hypoalbuminenia, and ascites disappeared by infusion of abumin on 4 d after operation. The total volume of pleural drainage was 250-1 420 ml, with an average of (717±372) ml for each patient, and the drainage tube was withdrawn on 3-5 d after operation. The followup time was 7-23 months (mean 15 months). Tumor recurrence was found in three patients on 5, 6, and 7 months after operation, respectively. Of them, two patients were in stable disease stage after interventional and conservative therapy, respectively, and one case recurred at six months after operation and died of hypertensive heart disease and hepatic function deterioration at sixteen months after operation. The rest patients survived and no recurrence and metastasis was observed during the follow-up period.ConclusionThe technique of percutaneous radiofrequency ablation with artificial hydrothorax increases the feasibility of the minimal invasive treatment for hepatoma, which can be applied to hepatocellular carcinoma in the hepatic dome with high safety and clinical application value.
ObjectiveTo observe the contrast sensitivity (CS) of patients with branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO) without involving the macular region. Methods92 BRVO patients (93 eyes) and 56 cases (112 eyes) without eye diseases (control group) were included in the study. According to different region, BRVO patients were divided into the nasal BRVO group (31 eyes) and temporal BRVO (62 eyes) group, and the average corrected visual acuity was 1.02±0.13 and 0.98±0.12 respectively. According to the type of ischemia, BRVO patients were divided into the nonischemic BRVO group (58 eyes) and ischemic BRVO group (35 eyes), the average corrected visual acuity was 1.01±0.14 and 0.99±0.12 respectively. The average corrected visual acuity of the control group was 1.03±0.11. There was no statistically significant difference of the average corrected visual acuity between nasal BRVO group, temporal BRVO group and control group (F=3.03, P=0.06), and between nonischemic BRVO group, ischemic BRVO group and control group (F=1.60,P=0.20). Contrast sensitivity (CS) was measured by OPTEC 6500 vision tester (Stereo Company, USA) under the standard lighting conditions and different spatial frequencies including low (1.5 and 3.0 c/d), medium (6.0 c/d) and high frequencies (12.0 and 18.0 c/d). ResultsThe CS under each spatial frequency of the nasal BRVO group was the same as the control group (t=4.25, 9.48, 3.08, 5.86, 0.94; P>0.05), but the CS under each spatial frequency of the temporal BRVO group was different from the control group (t=8.59, 19.11, 10.38, 17.28, 6.01; P<0.05). The CS under high spatial frequency of the temporal and nasal BRVO group was statistically different (t=11.42, 6.95; P<0.05). The CS under each spatial frequency of the ischemic BRVO group was different from the control group (t=8.88, 10.56, 11.64, 19.06, 6.67; P<0.05).The CS under 6, 12 and 18 c/d spatial frequency of the nonischemic BRVO group was statistically different with the control group (t=10.14, 11.54, 2.82; P<0.05). The CS under 12 and 18 c/d spatial frequency of the nonischemic BRVO group was statistically different with the ischemic BRVO (t=7.52, 3.84; P<0.05). ConclusionsThe CS of the temporal BRVO and ischemic BRVO decreased more significantly under each spatial frequency. CS is a better indicator to evaluate the visual function than the visual acuity in BRVO without involving the macular region.
Objective To evaluate the real-time contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) in the differential diagnosis of retroperitoneal occupying lesions. Methods Thirty patients with retroperitoneal occupying lesions, including 10 benign and 20 malignant lesions, were performed with CEUS, thus describing the perfusion of contrast agent, the entering style of contrast agent and the vascular morphous. And the entering styles were divided into two patterns: peripheral type or central type while the vascular morphous were divided into 4 levels: level 0, level 1, level 2 and level 3. All of these were compared between benign and malignant lesions. Compared the results of diagnosis malignant lesions by common ultrasonography with CEUS. Results 1/5 case of benign substantive lesions presented as contrast agent perfusion defect, and 11/20 cases of substantive malignant lesions presented as contrast agent perfusion defect. 14/20 of malignant lesions were central type; 9/10 of benign lesions were peripheral type (P=0.005 2). In benign lesions, level 0 had 7/10， level 1 had 2/10 and level 3 had 1/10. In malignant lesions, level 0 had 1/20, level 1 had 3/20, level 2 had 8/20 and level 3 had 8/20, too (P=0.000 5). The rate of missed diagnosis was 40.00% and the accuracy was 66.67% by common ultrasonography, while the rate of missed diagnosis was 10.00% and the accuracy was 86.67% by CEUS combined with the entering style of contrast agent and the vascular morphous. Conclusion The CEUS applies a new way to discriminate malignant from benign in retroperitoneal occupying lesions.
Due to its irregular shape and varying contour, pancreas segmentation is a recognized challenge in medical image segmentation. Convolutional neural network (CNN) and Transformer-based networks perform well but have limitations: CNN have constrained receptive fields, and Transformer underutilize image features. This work proposes an improved pancreas segmentation method by combining CNN and Transformer. Point-wise separable convolution was introduced in a stage-wise encoder to extract more features with fewer parameters. A densely connected ensemble decoder enabled multi-scale feature fusion, addressing the structural constraints of skip connections. Consistency terms and contrastive loss were integrated into deep supervision to ensure model accuracy. Extensive experiments on the Changhai and National Institute of Health (NIH) pancreas datasets achieved the highest Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) values of 76.32% and 86.78%, with superiority in other metrics. Ablation studies validated each component’s contributions to performance and parameter reduction. Results demonstrate that the proposed loss function smooths training and optimizes performance. Overall, the method outperforms other advanced methods, enhances pancreas segmentation performance, supports physician diagnosis, and provides a reliable reference for future research.
Objective To determine the value of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) in the differentiation of primary liver cancer (PLC) and hepatic alveolar echinococcosis (HAE). Methods The data of 56 patients with PLC or HAE were collected between January 2010 and May 2015. Grayscale and CEUS features of the patients were analyzed retrospectively. The frequency of each imaging finding, including calcification, arterial enhancement, and internal enhancement were evaluated and compared. Results Statistically significant difference of the proportion of gender and age were detected between the two groups (P=0.013, 0.002). Thirty-eight PLC lesions were detected in 32 patients. The diameters of PLC lesions were 3-10 cm with an average of (5.6±2.1) cm. Thirty-two HAE lesions were found in 24 patients. The diameters of HAE lesions were 4-12 cm with an average of (9.1±4.4) cm. Statistically significant difference of lesion size and the incidence rate of calcification (5.3% vs. 75.0%) were seen between PLC and HAE (P<0.001). Peripheral enhancement were seen in 100.0% (38/38) PLC lesions, including 84.2% (32/38) hyperenhancement and 15.8% (6/38) dendritic hyperenhancement. All PLC lesions demonstrated hypoenhancement in late phase. Irregular peripherally hyperenhancement both in arterial and late phase were detected in 43.8% (14/32) HAE lesions. The other 56.2% (18/32) HAE lesions showed no peripheral enhancement both in arterial and late phase. No internal enhancement were seen in HAE lesions. The presence of arterial enhancement (100.0% vs. 43.8%) and absence of internal enhancement (0 vs. 100.0%) were significantly different between PLC and HAE (P<0.001). Conclusions PLC is predicted by arterial phase hyperenhancement and late phase hypoenhancement on CEUS. HAE is predicted with calcification on baseline sonography and internal non-enhancement on CEUS. Arterial phase enhancement is less common and less intensive in HAE than in PLC which also contributes to the differentiation of these lesions.
ObjectiveTo compare the investigation results of compliance and accuracy of hand hygiene in medical staff achieved by Hospital Infection Management Department and Department Infection Management Teams, and analyze the reasons for differences of the results and take measures to improve the investigation ability of hand hygiene in hospitals. MethodsWe statistically analyzed the results of compliance and accuracy of hand hygiene from January to December 2013 investigated by the infection management department and 25 infection management teams. Both the hospital and departments used "WHO Standard Observation Form". Single-blind method was used to observe the implementation of hand hygiene in medical staff. ResultsThe hospital infection management department investigation showed that hand hygiene compliance and accuracy were 64.97% and 87.78%, respectively, while the investigation by infection management teams showed that hand hygiene compliance and accuracy were 90.54% and 93.37%, respectively. The differences between the investigation results of two-level organizations were statistically significant (χ2=286.2, P<0.001; χ2=532.6, P<0.001). ConclusionWe should take measures to enforce the training of hand hygiene implementation and the observation method, and improve the guidance and assessment, promote investigators' working responsibility and observation ability, so that the survey data can accurately reflect the actual situation to urge medical staff to form good hand hygiene habits.
ObjectiveTo systematically review the efficacy of statins for contrast induced nephropathy (CIN) prevention in cardiac intervention surgery patients. MethodsWe electronically searched databases including PubMed, Web of Knowledge, The Cochrane Library (Issue 5, 2015), VIP, WanFang Data and CNKI to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about statins for CIN prevention in cardiac intervention surgery patients from inception to May 2015. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Then, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.2 software. ResultsA total of 25 RCTs involving 37 353 patients were included, among them, 3 794 were CIN patients. The results of meta-analysis indicated that: compared with the placebo/blank group, the incidence rate of CIN was decreased in the statins group with a significant difference (OR=0.68, 95%CI 0.63 to 0.73, P<0.000 01). ConclusionCurrent evidence shows statins can reduce incidence of CIN in cardiac intervention surgery patients. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, the above conclusions need more high quality studies to verify.
Objective To investigate the value of a new double action MR contrast agent——Gd-BOPTA in the diagnosis of focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH) of the liver with correlation of pathology. Methods Dedicated MRI scans were performed for 5 patients suspected to have liver FNH on clinical and imaging basis (six lesions). The MR imaging protocol included axial T1W and T2W plain scan, coronal T2 weighted imaging, 3D MRCP, Gd-BOPTA enhanced LAVA dynamic tri-phasic acquisitions (scanning at 15 s, 55 s and 90 s respectively), enhanced 2D T1W scan, enhanced LAVA in delay phase (at 5 and 10 min) and in the hepatobiliary phase (at 40 and 80 min). The imaging features on each MR sequence were compared with surgical and pathological findings. Results Six lesions in 5 FNH patients were all correctly diagnosed (5 conformed by surgery and 1 by needle biopsy). ①The hemodynamic phase: The parenchyma of 5 lesions were markedly enhanced in the arterial phase, being isointense or slight hypointense in both the portal venous and delay phases, while 1 lesion was isointense in all phases except being slight hyperintense in the arterial phase; The central scar of 5 lesions were not enhanced in the dynamic phase, but showed delayed enhancement. ②The hepatobiliary (excretory) phase: The parenchyma of all 6 lesions were slight hyperintense or isointense, and tree-like bile ducts with hyperintensity were seen within one lesion. The scar showed no enhancement. ③Pathology: The parenchyma was consisted of disarranged normal hepatocytes but with cytoedema, lack of portal tracts and cholestatic change. The central scar showed rich fibrous tissue, a very thick-walled arteriole, proliferative bile ducts, infiltration of inflammatory cells and myxomatous changes. Conclusion As a dual-phase MR contrast agent capable of depicting both the hemodynamic attributes and hepatobiliary excretion, Gd-BOPTA enhanced MRI can reflect the pathological features of FNH and reach a high diagnostic accuracy.
ObjectiveTo evaluate the clinical application and the efficacy of contrast enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS)guided percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) in patients with liver metastases. MethodsTotal 136 patients with 219 liver metastatic tumors, which were detected by CEUS before RFA therapy, were analyzed retrospectively. The diamter of tumors was (3.2±1.2) cm. Among them, the largest tumor more than 3 cm in diameter were found in 48.5% (66 patients), and 57.4% (78 patients) were with solitary metastasis. Enhanced CT and (or) MRI, and laboratory tests were applied to evaluate the outcomes after RFA treatment by regular followup. ResultsTumors were not detected by conventional ultrasonography in two cases, and 47.0% (63/134) of the patients with the largest tumor were 0.3 cm larger by CEUS than by conventional ultrasonography. More 40 tumors were detected in 18.4% (25/136) patients by CEUS. Followup ranged from 3 to 68 months (median time of 12 months). Early tumor necrosis rate one month after therapy was 98.2% (215/219 tumors). The incidence of local recurrence, new intrahepatic metastasis, and extrahepatic metastasis was 16.9% (23/136), 38.2% (52/136), and 8.8% (12/136), respectively. Local recurrence and new intrahepatic metastasis happened 2-25 months (median time of 6 months) after treatment. Local recurrence rates of the largest tumors ≥ 3 cm and tumor lt; 3 cm was 22.7% and 11.4%， respectively (P=0.079). The rate of new intrahepatic metastasis for the solitary metastasis cases was significantly lower than that for multiple metastases cases (25.6% versus 55.2%, P=0.000). The 1, 2, 3year survival rates were 82.5%, 64.3%, and 50.1%, and the 1, 2, 3year local recurrence free survival rates were 67.7%, 53.8%, and 38.3%, respetively. Patients with solitary metastasis survived longer than that with multiple metastases (P=0.034). ConclusionPatients with liver metastases treated by CEUSguided percutaneous RFA can get better survival rate, and CEUS is of much value for clinic application.