Where biomedical research plain-language summaries?

Background And Aims: Plain-language summaries (PLS) are being heralded as a tool to improve communication of scientific research to lay audiences and time-poor or nonspecialist healthcare professionals. However, this relies on PLS being intuitively located and accessible. This research investigated the "discoverability" of PLS in biomedical journals.

MRI-guided breast biopsy: a review of technique, indications, and radiological-pathological correlations.

Breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the technique of choice in detection, local staging, and monitoring of breast cancer; however, breast MRI results in the detection of more indeterminate/suspicious lesions that need to be histopathologically proven to guide patient management than any other breast imaging method. If such abnormalities are not detectable in any of the conventional imaging tools (mammography (MMG) or ultrasound) then an MRI-guided biopsy needs to be performed to obtain a diagnosis. Breast MRI-guided biopsy is a time-consuming and complex procedure that requires specific equipment and experienced, well-trained staff.

Measuring the accuracy of diagnostic imaging in symptomatic breast patients: team and individual performance.

Objective: The combination of mammography and/or ultrasound remains the mainstay in current breast cancer diagnosis. The aims of this study were to evaluate the reliability of standard breast imaging and individual radiologist performance and to explore ways that this can be improved.

Methods: A total of 16,603 separate assessment episodes were undertaken on 13,958 patients referred to a specialist symptomatic breast clinic over a 6 year period.

Ultrasound of the axilla: where to look for the sentinel lymph node.

Aims: The aim of this paper is to guide the radiologist to the most likely location of the sentinel lymph node (SLN).

Materials And Methods: Patients with invasive breast cancer underwent axillary ultrasound examination. The position and morphological appearances of the lymph nodes were noted and core biopsy (CB) was performed of the largest or most suspicious node.

One-stop diagnostic breast clinics: how often are breast cancers missed?

The aim of this study was to estimate the number of patients discharged from a symptomatic breast clinic who subsequently develop breast cancer and to determine how many of these cancers had been 'missed' at initial assessment. Over a 3-year period, 7004 patients were discharged with a nonmalignant diagnosis. Twenty-nine patients were subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer over the next 36 months.

Ultrasound guided percutaneous axillary lymph node core biopsy: how often is the sentinel lymph node being biopsied?

Patients with breast cancer now frequently undergo axillary ultrasound and core biopsy (CB) in an attempt to reduce the number of unnecessary sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsies. This study aimed to establish the frequency of successful targeting of the SLN by ultrasound guided biopsy. A total of 137 patients had axillary ultrasound of which 121 underwent CB.

Use of ultrasound-guided axillary node core biopsy in staging of early breast cancer.

The aim of this study was to see how effective ultrasound-guided needle biopsy was at detecting lymph node involvement in patients with early breast cancer. Patients with newly diagnosed invasive breast cancer underwent axillary ultrasound (US) where lymph node size and morphology were noted. A core biopsy (CB) was undertaken of any node greater than 5 mm in longitudinal section.

Unexpected changes in clinical diagnosis: early abdomino-pelvic computed tomography compared with clinical evaluation.

Background: To evaluate the value of early computed tomography (CT) on identifying clinically "unexpected" diagnosis in patients presenting with "non specific" acute abdominal pain.

Materials And Methods: All patients presenting to on-call surgeons with acute abdominal pain were eligible study participants. Patients were randomised to CT within one hour of admission or supine abdominal and erect chest radiography.

A simple processing method allowing comparison of renal enhancing volumes derived from standard portal venous phase contrast-enhanced multidetector CT images to derive a CT estimate of differential renal function with equivalent results to nuclear medicine quantification.

As iodinated contrast medium is cleared by glomerular filtration, it should be possible to apply the same principles utilized in radionuclide studies to derive differential renal function by comparison of enhancing renal volumes derived from contrast enhanced multidetector CT (CEMDCT). Having established a technique iteratively which appeared successful, a retrospective study was performed using 25 consecutive patients with a wide range of urological conditions who had undergone both CEMDCT, including the renal area in the portal venous phase, and nuclear medicine (NM) assessment of renal function with no urological intervention between the studies. Proprietary volume software was used to quantify the volume and attenuation of each kidney, the products of which (after subtraction of soft tissue attenuation derived from a region of interest over psoas) gave right and left enhancing renal volumes.

Evaluation of carotid stenosis with axial high-resolution black-blood MR imaging.

High-resolution axial black-blood MR imaging (BB MRI) has been shown to be able to characterise carotid plaque morphology. The aim of this study was to explore the accuracy of this technique in quantifying the severity of carotid stenosis. A prospective study of 54 patients with symptomatic carotid disease was conducted, comparing BB MRI to the gold standard, conventional digital subtraction X-ray angiography (DSA).