To assess the use of miniaturized percutaneous nephrolithotomy (mini-PCNL) for renal stones in children, as well as its safety and efficacy. Seventy-seven patients with more than 15 mm renal stones whose age was less than 15 years were enrolled in this prospective case-controlled study at Al-Ramadi Teaching Hospital, Ar Razi Private Hospital, and Ghazi Al-Hariri Hospital for Surgical Specialties, Anbar and Baghdad, Iraq. The study was conducted from January 2020 to January 2024. The group mentioned above served as group A, and it was compared to the control group (group B), which consisted of 70 adult patients aged 18–60 years. Patients in both groups underwent mini-PCNL. Gender, stone size and location, time of operation, stone-free rate, hemoglobin drop, need for blood transfusion, postoperative fever, associated visceral injury, and need for further interventions such as extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy or flexible ureteroscopy (ESWL or FURS) were compared in both groups. The age of patients in group A ranged from 8 months to 15 years with a mean (4.30 ± 3.16), while in group B ranged from 18 to 60 years with a mean (36.3 ± 12.0), p-value 0.001. There were no statistically significant differences regarding gender distribution, stone size, and location, p-value > 0.05. The stone-free rate was 87.01% for group A and 88.57% for group B, with no statistical difference, p-value 0.773. Hemoglobin drop was 1.096 ± 0.412 for group A and 1.195 ± 0.110 for group B, p-value 0.046. Blood transfusion was needed in one case in each group with no statistical difference, p-value 0.946. The need for ESWL was 3 cases in group A, and 2 cases in group B, with no statistical difference between the two groups, p-value 0.729. The need for FURS was 4 cases in group A and 3 cases in group B, p-value 0.796. Operative time was 30 to 125 min in group A and 34 to 129 min in group B, p-value 0.941. Postoperative fever was seen in 23 cases in group A and 21 cases in group B, p-value 0.986. Minor liver injury was seen was seen in one case in each group. The use of mini-PCNL for treating renal stones in children is safe and effective as it is associated with a relatively low rate of significant complications and achieves a high stone-free rate.
The present investigation is concerned for the purification of impure zinc oxide (80-85 wt %) by using petroleum coke
(carbon content is 76 wt %) as reducing agent for the impure zinc oxide to provide pure zinc vapor, which will be
oxidized later by air to the pure zinc oxide.
The operating conditions of the reaction were studied in detail which are, reaction time within the range (10 to 30 min),
reaction temperature (900 to 1100 oC), air flow rate (0.2 to 1 l/min) and weight percentage of the reducing agent
(petroleum coke) in the feed (14 to 30 wt %).
The best operating conditions were (30 min) for the reaction time, (1100 oC) for the reaction temperature, (1 l/min) for
the air flow rate, and (30 wt %) of reducing
A variety of oxides were examined as additives to a V2O5/Al2O3 catalyst in order to enhance the catalytic performance for the vapor phase oxidation of toluene to benzoic acid. It was found that the modification with MoO3 greatly promoted the little reaction leading to improve catalyst performance in terms of toluene conversion and benzoic acid selectivity. The effect of catalyst surface area, catalyst promoters, reaction temperature, O2/toluene, steam/toluene, space velocity, and catalyst composition to catalyst performance were examined in order to increase the benzoic acid selectivity and yield.
Experimental research was carried out to investigate the performance of CFRP wrapping jackets used for retrofitting twelve square reinforced concrete (CR) column specimens damaged by exposure to fire flame, at different temperatures of 300, 500 and 700ºC, except for two specimens that were not burned. The specimens were then loaded axially till failure after gradual or sudden cooling. The specimens were divided into two groups containing two main reinforcement ratios, ρ= 0.0314 and ρ= 0.0542. This was followed by the retrofitting procedure that included wrapping all the specimens with two layers of CFRP fabric sheets. The test results of the retrofitted specimens showed that the fire damaged RC
... Show MoreThis paper presents a method of designing and constructing a system capable of acquiring
the third dimension and reconstructs a 3D shape for an object from multi images of that object using
the principle of active optical triangulation. The system consists of an illumination source, a photo
detector, a movement mechanism and a PC, which is working as a controlling unit for the hard ware
components and as an image processing unit for the object multi view raw images which must be
processed to extract the third dimension. The result showed that the optical triangulation method
provides a rapid mean for obtaining accurate and quantitative distance measurements. The final
result's analysis refers to the necessity of usin
The aerodynamic characteristics of general three-dimensional rectangular wings are considered using non-linear interaction between two-dimensional viscous-inviscid panel method and vortex ring method. The potential flow of a two-dimensional airfoil by the pioneering Hess & Smith method was used with viscous laminar, transition and turbulent boundary layer to solve flow about complex configuration of airfoils including stalling effect. Viterna method was used to extend the aerodynamic characteristics of the specified airfoil to high angles of attacks. A modified vortex ring method was used to find the circulation values along span wise direction of the wing and then interacted with sectional circulation obtained by Kutta-Joukowsky the
... Show MoreSuicidal ideation is one of the most severe mental health issues faced by people all over the world. There are various risk factors involved that can lead to suicide. The most common & critical risk factors among them are depression, anxiety, social isolation and hopelessness. Early detection of these risk factors can help in preventing or reducing the number of suicides. Online social networking platforms like Twitter, Redditt and Facebook are becoming a new way for the people to express themselves freely without worrying about social stigma. This paper presents a methodology and experimentation using social media as a tool to analyse the suicidal ideation in a better way, thus helping in preventing the chances of being the victim o
... Show MoreZerumbone (ZER), a natural compound has been extracted from Zingiber zerumbet with known pharmacological activities. The aim was to determine the anti-human Burkitt’s lymphoma (Raji) cell effect of ZER. The 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5,-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay was used to determine cytotoxic effect while the Annexin-V-fluorescein isothiocyanate/propidium iodide-PI flow cytometric assays was used to determine apoptotic effect of ZER on the human Burkitt’s lymphoma (Raji) cell (ATCC CCL-86) cell line. The expressions of Bax, Bcl-2, and c-Myc genes were determined via real-time PCR. ZER suppressed the proliferation of Raji cells with a 48 h IC50 value of 5.1 μg/mL. Treated Raji cells also underwen
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