PURPOSE We describe the trends in transurethral prostatectomy and minimally invasive surgical treatments for benign prostate hyperplasia from 1999 through 2005 among elderly male Medicare beneficiaries. MATERIALS AND METHODS Benign prostatic hyperplasia surgeries were identified using the annual 100% Medicare carrier files which contain physician claims for services reimbursed under Medicare ...

BACKGROUND Fresh frozen plasma (FFP) is an effective therapy to correct for a deficiency of multiple coagulation factors during bleeding. In past years, use of FFP has increased, in particular in patients on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and has expanded to include prophylactic use in patients with a coagulopathy prior to undergoing an invasive procedure. Retrospective studies suggest that pro...

Thoracotomic esophagectomy followed by cervical and abdominal procedures has been conventionally performed as the best curable operative procedure for treating invasive thoracic esophageal carcinoma. Despite improvements in the survival rate, the procedure is associated with significant operative morbidity and mortality rates due to the extreme invasiveness of an extensive dissection of the lym...

BACKGROUND Many atrial fibrillation (AF) patients have a poor understanding of the management of this condition. We investigated patient attitudes towards AF and a potential invasive treatment following an average 10-year period of prospective rhythm control in a cohort of newly diagnosed AF patients. METHODS This was a prospective registry-based study. At the regular annual visit in 2007, pa...

[1] Phan K, Yan TD. Minimally invasive Cox-maze procedure, beating-heart epicardial ablation, hybrid procedure and catheter ablation: a call for comparative evidence. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2015;48:515. [2] Je HG, Shuman DJ, Ad N. A systematic review of minimally invasive surgical treatment for atrial fibrillation: a comparison of the Cox-Maze procedure, beating-heart epicardial ablation, and ...

OBJECT Postoperative surgical site infections (SSIs) have been reported after 2-6% of spinal surgeries in most large series. The incidence of SSI can be < 1% after decompressive procedures and > 10% after instrumented fusions. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that there is a lower rate of SSI when minimally invasive techniques are used. METHODS A retrospective review of prospectively collecte...

Invasive candidiasis is a frequent and often fatal complication in immunocompromised and critically ill patients. Unfortunately, the diagnosis of invasive candidiasis remains difficult due to the lack of specific clinical symptoms and a definitive diagnostic method. The detection of antibodies against different Candida antigens may help in the diagnosis. However, the methods traditionally used ...