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.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most common gastrointestinal malignancy and one of the top ten common cancers worldwide with approximately 2 million cases. There are multiple risk factors that could lead to CRC emergence; of which are genetic polymorphisms. Excision repair cross-complementing group 2 (ERCC2) gene encodes for ERCC2 enzyme which plays a crucial role in maintaining genomic integrity by removing DNA adducts. Several studies suggested that there could be a link between genetic polymorphisms of ERCC2 gene and the risk of CRC development. Hence the present study aims to validate the relationship between the following ERCC2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs13181, rs149943175, rs530662943, and rs1799790) and CRC susceptibility. A t
... Show MoreIn this work, strains and dynamic crack growth were studied and analyzed in thin flat plate with a surface crack at the center, subjected to cycling low velocity impact loading for two types of aluminum plates (2024, 6061). Experimental and numerical methods were implemented to achieve this research. Numerical analysis using program (ANSYS11-APDL) based on finite element method used to analysis the strains with respect to time at crack tip and then find the velocity of the crack growth under cycling impact loading. In the experimental work, a rig was designed and manufactured to applying the cycling impact loading on the cracked specimens. The grid points was screened in front of the crack tip to measure the elastic-plas
... Show MoreSensing insole systems are a promising technology for various applications in healthcare and sports. They can provide valuable information about the foot pressure distribution and gait patterns of different individuals. However, designing and implementing such systems poses several challenges, such as sensor selection, calibration, data processing, and interpretation. This paper proposes a sensing insole system that uses force-sensitive resistors (FSRs) to measure the pressure exerted by the foot on different regions of the insole. This system classifies four types of foot deformities: normal, flat, over-pronation, and excessive supination. The classification stage uses the differential values of pressure points as input for a feedforwar
... Show MoreThe issue of penalized regression model has received considerable critical attention to variable selection. It plays an essential role in dealing with high dimensional data. Arctangent denoted by the Atan penalty has been used in both estimation and variable selection as an efficient method recently. However, the Atan penalty is very sensitive to outliers in response to variables or heavy-tailed error distribution. While the least absolute deviation is a good method to get robustness in regression estimation. The specific objective of this research is to propose a robust Atan estimator from combining these two ideas at once. Simulation experiments and real data applications show that the p
... Show MoreThe Sequencing Batch Reactor system (SBR) is a major component of the municipal wastewater biological treatment system and water reclamation that provides high-quality water that could be reused in restricted plants that which require large quantities of water despite the lack of water. The research aims to investigate the performance of a pilot plant SBR unit under real operation conditions that was installed and operated in Al-Rustamiya Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), Baghdad, Iraq. Results showed that the BOD5/COD ratio of the raw wastewater was within the average value at 0.66 emphasizing the organic nature of the influent flow and hence the amenability to biological treatment. The results also ensured that the treatment pro
... Show MoreThe present study focused mainly on the buckling behavior of composite laminated plates subjected to mechanical loads. Mechanical loads are analyzed by experimental analysis, analytical analysis (for laminates without cutouts) and numerical analysis by finite element method (for laminates with and without cutouts) for different type of loads which could be uniform or non-uniform, uniaxial or biaxial. In addition to many design parameters of the laminates such as aspect ratio, thickness ratio, and lamination angle or the parameters of the cutout such as shape, size, position, direction, and radii rounding) which are changed to studytheir effects on the buckling characteristics with various boundary conditions. Levy method of classical lam
... Show MoreOne hundred forty three of Klebsiellapneumoniae isolates had been collected from some hospitals in Baghdad city. The isolates were taken from different clinical specimens.Antimicrobial susceptibility test was carried out towards fifteen antimicrobial agents by using Vitek2 system with Antimicrobial susceptibility test cards. The results of antibiogram showed that the local isolates were possess highly resistance towards most antimicrobial agents under study. The high resistance wastoAmpicillin while the low resistance was to Imipenem.Two methods were used for detection of Extended Spectrum Beta Lactamases (ESBLs) production; first methods by using of Vitek2 system,thesecondmethods by using of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to dis
... Show MoreIn this paper, we calculate and measure the SNR theoretically and experimental for digital full duplex optical communication systems for different ranges in free space, the system consists of transmitter and receiver in each side. The semiconductor laser (pointer) was used as a carrier wave in free space with the specification is 5mW power and 650nm wavelength. The type of optical detector was used a PIN with area 1mm2 and responsively 0.4A/W for this wavelength. The results show a high quality optical communication system for different range from (300-1300)m with different bit rat (60-140)kbit/sec is achieved with best values of the signal to noise ratio (SNR).