مجله دانشکده پزشکی اصفهان
پیاپی 548 (هفته چهارم آذر 1398)

According to the high prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver and high rates of ultrasonography candidates for diagnosis of this disease, the aim of this study was to determine the agreement between ultrasound and computed tomography (CT) scan in diagnosis of non-alcoholic fatty liver.

In a cross-sectional study conducted in 2018 at Ali ibn Abitaleb hospital in Rafsanjan, Iran, 100 patients with abdominal CT scan who were suspected to metabolic syndrome were enrolled. All patients underwent CT scan and liver ultrasonography. The degree of agreement between ultrasound and CT scan was investigated in diagnosis of fatty liver.

Fatty liver was diagnosed in 68 patients (68%) in ultrasound and CT scan diagnostic methods; and was not diagnosed in 18 patients (18%) by both diagnostic methods. In contrast, although in 8 patients (8%) fatty liver was found in ultrasonography, they were normal in the CT scan. Six patients (6%) also showed fatty liver in CT scan, while fatty liver was not diagnosed in ultrasound assessment. Overall, the agreement between CT scan and ultrasound findings was 0.63 (P < 0.001).

The results of the present study showed that there was a good agreement between ultrasonography and CT scan findings in determining non-alcoholic fatty liver. It seems that ultrasonography is a good diagnostic method for the evaluation of patients with suspected liver transfusion.

There are many drugs to control the pain after surgeries. Aminophylline, metoclopramide, and acetaminophen are known to be able to control pain. In this study, we aimed to compare the effects of these three drugs in controlling pain after strabismus correction surgery.

This was a double-blinded randomized clinical trial on 120 patients underwent strabismus correction surgery in Feiz hospital, Isfahan, Iran. Patients were randomized into 4 groups of aminophylline, metoclopramide, acetaminophen, and placebo. All patients and surgeons were unaware of groups and drugs. After strabismus surgery, patients were assessed using visual analogue scale (VAS) to evaluate their pain. Hemodynamic parameters, as well as extubation and recovery times after surgeries were also evaluated.

Postoperative pain assessments indicated a lower pain intensity in acetaminophen, metoclopramide, and aminophylline, respectively, compared to placebo at the time of recovery entrance and 15 and 30 minutes afterwards (P < 0.001).

According to the results of present study, acetaminophen has a better effect in controlling postoperative pain than metoclopramide and aminophylline.

One of the most common cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in the world is myocardial infarction (MI). By analyzing electrocardiogram and vectorcardiography (VCG) signals, it is possible to identify and characterize heart diseases such as MI. One of the new methods of detection is the use of spatio-temporal parameters of VCG signals. This study aimed to correctly distinguish healthy signals from patients, achieve acceptable accuracy, and show the benefits of VCG and its application as a method to cover the shortcoming of electrocardiography.

In this study, in addition to applying electrocardiogram signals in the time domain, spatio-temporal patterns of VCG signals were used to identify 80 patients with MI, and differentiate them from 80 healthy individuals.

When combining the 12-lead electrocardiography (ECG) and the 3-lead VCG features applied to the Feedforward Neural Network classifier input, an accuracy of 91.2%, specificity of 92.6%, and specificity of 90% were obtained. The results were in higher values than when applied separately.

 The observations indicate that combined ECG and VCG methods can be effective in distinguishing MI cases from healthy cases. It is hoped that this method may be useful in the clinical evaluation and heart failure diagnosis.