German Survey on EUS-Guided Diagnosis and Management of Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors (GISTs) - Evidence or "Gut-Feeling"?

To examine practice patterns of endosonographers in diagnosing and managing gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) in Germany.A modified published survey (Ha et al., Gastrointest Endosc 2009) was sent to endosonographic ultrasound (EUS) customers in Germany. The survey was also publicized on the homepage of an EUS interest group. To avoid duplicate opinions, participants were asked to return one survey per institution.142 centers of roughly 850 German EUS centers responded. 25 % were from University hospitals and 74 % from community hospitals. 61 % performed 2 EUS scans for suspected subepithelial lesions/week. Although 97 % of respondents believed that tissue acquisition with CD117 immuno…

Eleven Relapses in a Cohort of 78 Patients with Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (iTTP): Data from the German TTP-Registry

Echocardiographic Image Analysis Based on the Evaluation of first Order Speckle Statistics

Basic theoretical considerations on the statistical properties of the speckle phenomenon indicate that a conventional quantization (intervals of uniform width) of the received and envelope detected RF — signal is not adequate. We therefore propose a quantization scheme which is based on the application of quantization intervals producing always the same confidence level (adaptive quantization). The advantages are: homogenous distribution of speckle noise reduction to about 10 – 20 significant quantization levels (with neglectable loss of morphological information) quantitative measure (confidence level) of the separability of regions represented with different quantization levels. We furthe…

Supplementary Material for: Incidence of Retinal Detachment in Germany: Results from the Gutenberg Health Study

Purpose: To investigate the incidence of retinal detachment in the German population and to assess potential risk factors. Methods: The Gutenberg Health Study is a population-based cohort study in Mainz, Germany, including subjects (n = 15,010) with an age range from 35 to 74 years at baseline examination. Study participants underwent a comprehensive ophthalmological examination including distant-corrected visual acuity, refraction and slit-lamp examination at baseline examination. A computer-assisted telephone interview was conducted after 2.5 and 5 years, and health events were recorded. The 5-year cumulative incidence of retinal detachment was computed for the study sample and stratified…