Artificial neural network models for predicting 1-year mortality in elderly patients with intertrochanteric fractures in China

The mortality rate of older patients with intertrochanteric fractures has been increasing with the aging of populations in China. The purpose of this study was: 1) to develop an artificial neural network (ANN) using clinical information to predict the 1-year mortality of elderly patients with intertrochanteric fractures, and 2) to compare the ANN's predictive ability with that of logistic regression models. The ANN model was tested against actual outcomes of an intertrochanteric femoral fracture database in China. The ANN model was generated with eight clinical inputs and a single output. ANN's performance was compared with a logistic regression model created with the same inputs in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and discriminability. The study population was composed of 2150 patients (679 males and 1471 females): 1432 in the training group and 718 new patients in the testing group. The ANN model that had eight neurons in the hidden layer had the highest accuracies among the four ANN models: 92.46 and 85.79% in both training and testing datasets, respectively. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves of the automatically selected ANN model for both datasets were 0.901 (95%CI=0.814-0.988) and 0.869 (95%CI=0.748-0.990), higher than the 0.745 (95%CI=0.612-0.879) and 0.728 (95%CI=0.595-0.862) of the logistic regression model. The ANN model can be used for predicting 1-year mortality in elderly patients with intertrochanteric fractures. It outperformed a logistic regression on multiple performance measures when given the same variables.

Clinicopathology study of oral and oropharyngeal carcinoma in Seychelles

Oral and oropharyngeal carcinoma happens to be one of the commonest cancerous lesions in Seychelles. According to cancer registry statistics; of 621 cases of cancer from 1983 to 1991; oral and oropharyngeal carcinoma account for 9.98 per cent of all cases. An attempt has been made to analyse the age and sex of patients; the location and morphology of the carcinomas; and the prognosis; so as to present the clinicopathological features of oral and oropharyngeal carcinoma in Seychelles; with possible etiological factors

Pseudosarcoma in marfan's syndrome : a case study

Pseudosarcomatous fasciitis was reported by Knowaler et al in 1955. It is a benign and quasi-neoplastic proliferation of fibroblasts; which is often mistaken for a sarcoma because of its rapid growth; rich cellularity and mitotic activity. It is one of the more common soft tissue lesions and exceeds in frequency other tumor or tumor-like lesions of fibrous tissue. This attested to by the more than 1000 cases that were reviewed at the American Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in a 20 year period. The case of pseudosarcoma occuring in a patient with marfan's syndrome in Seychelles is reported