Background: Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency. The diagnosis of this condition is still essentially clinical and there is difficulty in the clinical diagnosis, especially among elderly, children and patients with a typical presentation, so early and accurate diagnosis of acute appendicitis is important to avoid its complications.Objectives: To evaluate the degree of accuracy of Alvarado scoring system in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis.Method: Two hundred patients were admitted to the Alkindy Teaching Hospital from January 2011 to april 2014- presented with symptoms and signs suggestive of acute appendicitis. After examination and investigations all patients were given a score according to Alvarado scoring 10 (8 variables) and they were classified accordingly to 6 groups of scores (score 5, score 6, score 7, score 8, score 9 and score 10). All the patients underwent appendectomy and the appendix specimens were sent for histopathological examination and the patients were divided into two groups:1-patients 7 score (164 patients)2-patients <7 score (36 patients)-We calculate the percentage of appendix proved to be inflamed by histopathology in each group of these 6 scoring groups.Results: The patients ages range from (7-64 years).One hundred six patients were male, 94 patients were female with male: female ratio of 1.24:1.Out of 200 patients, 168 patients had inflamed appendix proved by histopathological study, including 93 male and 75 female, while 32 patients have a normal appendix (13 male, 19 female).The Alvarado sensitivity found to be 83%, specificity is 59%, diagnostic accuracy of 85%, positive predictive value of 92% and negative predictive value of 59%.The diagnostic accuracy of the Alvarado score was found to be increased with the increase in the Alvarado score as it was 81% with Alvarado score 7 it was 100% in Alvarado score 10.Conclusion : Alvarado scoring system is a useful tool in diagnosis of acute appendicitis because it is simple, with high diagnostic accuracy rate and this accuracy increase proportionally to the increase in the degree of the score.Alvarado scoring system is a useful tool in diagnosis of acute appendicitis because it is simple, with high diagnostic accuracy rate and this accuracy increase proportionally to the increase in the degree of the score
The performance grading system (superpave) has provided means to incorporate binder characteristics with
pavement failure types. It’s a comprehensive system that relates climate, traffic conditions and aging with
critical pavement distress. The objective of this paper is to develop an improved asphalt binder grading
system for Iraq based on the principal of superpave. The country was divided into different zones according
to the highest and lowest temperature ranges and traffic loading. The Performance graded binder proposed
for each zone was compared with some States of USA that have same hot weather of Iraq by using Long
Term Pavement Performance (LTPP v3.1) software. Iraqi asphalt samples were tested using the Supe
DC planar sputtering system is characterized by varying discharge potential of (250-2000 volt) and Argon gas pressures of (3.5×10-2 – 1.5) mbar. The breakdown voltage for silver electrode was studied with a uniform electric field at different discharge distances, as well as plasma parameters. The breakdown voltage is a product of the Argon gas pressure inside the chamber and gab distance between the electrodes, represent as Paschen curve. The Current-voltage characteristics curves indicate that the electrical discharge plasma is working in the abnormal glow region. Plasma parameters were found from the current-voltage characteristics of a single probe positioned at the inter-cathode space. Typical values of the electron temperature an
... Show MoreIn recent years, there has been expanding development in the vehicular part and the number of vehicles moving on the road in all the sections of the country. Vehicle number plate identification based on image processing is a dynamic area of this work; this technique is used for security purposes such as tracking of stolen cars and access control to restricted areas. The License Plate Recognition System (LPRS) exploits a digital camera to capture vehicle plate numbers is used as input to the proposed recognition system. Basically, the developing system is consist of three phases, vehicle license plate localization, character segmentation, and character recognition, the License Plate (LP) detection is presented using canny
... Show MoreStatic Synchronous Series Compensator (SSSC) is a well known device for effectively regulating the active power flow in a power system. In this paper, the SSSC linearized power flow equations are incorporated into Newton-Raphson algorithm in a MATLAB written program to investigate the control of active poweer flow and the transient stability of a five bus and a thirty bus IEEE test systems, during abnormal conduction (three phase fault near buses). A comparison of the results obtained for the base case without SSSC and with it to investigate the effectiveness of the device on both of the active power flow and the transient stability.
The aim of this study was the discrimination of Salmonella isolated from chicken and their feed and drinking water for the epidemiological control of salmonellosis. Totally, 289 samples, including 217 chicken cloaca swabs, 46 water, and 26 feed samples were collected from five different farms in Karbala governorate, Iraq. Conventional bacteriology tests, API 20E, Vitek 2, and serology were used for bacterial identification. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was applied to analyze the genetic relationships among Salmonella isolates. The isolation rate of Salmonella spp. was 21.1% (61/289). While the water samples constituted the highest rate (30.4%), a rate of
... Show MoreIn this study, a traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) classification system is proposed using a convolutional neural network (CNN) technique with automatically learned features from electromyography (EMG) signals for a non-human primate (NHP) model. A comparison between the proposed classification system and a classical classification method (k-nearest neighbors, kNN) is also presented. Developing such an NHP model with a suitable assessment tool (i.e., classifier) is a crucial step in detecting the effect of TSCI using EMG, which is expected to be essential in the evaluation of the efficacy of new TSCI treatments. Intramuscular EMG data were collected from an agonist/antagonist tail muscle pair for the pre- and post-spinal cord lesi
... Show MoreRe-use of the byproduct wastes resulting from different municipal and industrial activities in the reclamation of contaminated water is real application for green projects and sustainability concepts. In this direction, the synthesis of composite sorbent from the mixing of waterworks and sewage sludge coated with new nanoparticles named “siderite” (WSSS) is the novelty of this study. These particles can be precipitated from the iron(II) nitrate using waterworks sludge as alkaline agent and source of carbonate. Characterization tests using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) mapping revealed that the coating process was c