We performed multivariate linear regression to determine the association of the effective radiation dose with specific patient, stone and procedural characteristics.

Results: Mean +/- SD patient age was 51.5 +/- 13.4 years and 62.5% of the patients were female. Median body mass index was 32.0 +/- 9.7 kg/m(2) (range 16.2 to 59.6) and the median stone burden was 4 cm(2). Increased body mass index (p <0.001), higher stone burden (p = 0.013), stone nonbranched

configuration (p = 0.002) and a greater number of percutaneous access tracts (p = 0.040) were significantly associated with an increased effective radiation dose. Specifically obese patients with a body mass index of 30 to 39.9 kg/m(2) had a more than Milciclib research buy 2-fold increase in the mean adjusted effective radiation dose and TPCA-1 mw morbidly obese patients with a body mass index of 40 kg/m(2) or greater had a greater than 3-fold increase vs that in normal weight patients with a body mass index of less than 25 kg/m(2) (6.49 and 9.13 mSv, respectively, vs 2.66, p <0.001). Other stone specific parameters, including site and composition, percutaneous access site and estimated blood loss were not associated

with the effective radiation dose.

Conclusions: Patients with higher body mass index, greater stone burden, nonbranched stones and multiple nephrostomy access tracts are at risk for increased radiation exposure during percutaneous nephrolithotomy. Urologists must seek alternative strategies to minimize radiation exposure, such as tighter collimation to the region of interest, judicious use of magnification and the acquisition of as few images as possible during stone removal.”
“Language is fairly well preserved in most patients with mild Alzheimer’s only disease, but writing ability seems to be impaired even in the early stages of the disease. To investigate the neural bases of writing impairments in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we examined the correlation between writing ability and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in 52 Japanese patients

with mild AD compared to 22 controls, using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). We found that, compared with control subjects, Kana writing to dictation and copying Kanji words were preserved in AD patients, but writing to dictating Kanji words was impaired. We classified the errors in the Kanji dictation task into four types to investigate the correlation between rCBF and the error type, as follows: non-response errors, phonologically plausible errors, non-phonologically plausible errors, and peripheral errors. Non-response errors, which indicated difficulty with retrieving Kanji graphic images, were the most frequent. When controlled for confounding factors, the number of non-response errors negatively correlated with rCBF in the left inferior parietal lobule, the posterior middle and inferior temporal gyri, and the posterior middle frontal gyrus.