HCV point-of-care screening programme and treatment options for people who use drugs in a metropolitan area of Southern Italy.

Background And Aims: People who use drugs (PWUD) represent an active reservoir of HCV infection. The prevalence of chronic HCV infection in PWUD in Italy remains unknown because of the lack of systematic screening. Thanks to direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs), hepatitis C can now be cured in most patients.

Flat-panel CT versus 128-slice CT in temporal bone imaging: Assessment of image quality and radiation dose.

Objective: We compared the image quality and radiation dose of flat-panel CT (FPCT) and multi-slice CT (MSCT) performed respectively with an angiographic unit and a 128-slice CT scanner. We investigated whether the higher spatial resolution of FPCT translated into higher image quality and we sought to eliminate inter-subject variability by scanning temporal bone specimens with both techniques.

Materials And Methods: Fifteen temporal bone specimens were imaged with FPCT and MSCT.