Fine-needle aspiration cytology of thyroid nodules--how well are we doing?

Objectives: To review the accuracy of fine-needle aspiration cytology in diagnosing non-toxic thyroid nodules and determine what factors are predictive of malignancy in patients with indeterminate cytology results.

Design: Retrospective study.

Setting: Regional hospital, Hong Kong.

Steroid-induced osteonecrosis in severe acute respiratory syndrome: a retrospective analysis of biochemical markers of bone metabolism and corticosteroid therapy.

Aim: We investigated the effect of massive doses of corticosteroid therapy on bone metabolism using specific biochemical markers of bone metabolism, and the prevalence of osteonecrosis in severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) patients at a university teaching hospital in Hong Kong.

Methods: Seventy-one patients with a clinical diagnosis of SARS were studied according to the modified World Health Organization case definition of SARS who were involved in the SARS epidemic between 10 March and 20 June 2003. The clinical diagnosis was confirmed by serological test and/or molecular analysis.

Effect of a compensated Jaffe creatinine method on the estimation of glomerular filtration rate.

Background: Roche Diagnostics has issued new c-fas calibrators for its automated systems. These produce creatinine values that are more comparable with those obtained by high-performance liquid chromatography. However, this results in an underestimation of measured creatinine at concentrations below 155 micromol/L and an overestimation at concentrations above this value.