BACKGROUND Many efforts have been made to better integrate spiritual assessment into the care of patients with cancer, with varying degrees of success in different parts of the United States. Little work has been done to describe challenges that face those who seek to implement assessment in busy ambulatory settings, particularly in the northeastern section of the United States. OBJECTIVES Th...

PURPOSE A randomized clinical trial was designed to compare the efficacy, success rate and surgical complications of percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) and laparoscopic pyelolithotomy (LP). MATERIALS AND METHODS Sixty patients with renal pelvic stones larger than 2 cm were randomly divided into two groups of LP and PCNL. All patients were followed up to three months after surgery using renal...

  From 1974 through 1983, 18 patients with metastatic epidural spinal tumors were admitted , and 12 cases were operated on, in order to relieve pain and neurological deficits . The age distribution of the 12 cases was between 4 and 74 years. Complete motor paralysis was seen in six cases , and in complete motor paralysis, in five cases. One showed no deficit except pain . Pain, either loca...

BACKGROUND Myofascial pain syndrome of the pelvic floor (MPSPF) is a common disease in the context of chronic pelvic pain (CPP); however, there is currently no gold-standard test to diagnose it. OBJECTIVE To validate the turns-amplitude analysis (TAA) as a diagnostic test for MPSPF in patients with CPP. METHODS A case-control study was performed, and patients were consecutively sampled with...

  The authors previously reported a new, in vitro technique for determining the invasiveness of four rat neurogenic tumor cell lines. Now this method has been modified and applied to the analysis of the invasiveness of human brain tumors.   Eighty-seven tumors, including 61 gliomas, six metastatic brain tumors, 10 meningiomas, four neurinomas, one melanoma, one hemangioblas...