Electrogastrography in patients with gastric motility disorders.

Electrogastrography (EGG) is a novel diagnostic modality for assessing the gastrointestinal tract (GI) that generates spontaneous electrical activity and monitors gastric motility. The aim of this study was to compare patients with functional dyspepsia (FD) and diabetic gastroparesis (D-GP) with healthy controls (CT) to use established findings on abnormalities of gastric motility based on EGG characteristics. In this study, 50 patients with FD, 50 D-GP patients, and 50 CT subjects were studied to compare EGG with discrete wavelet transform models (DWT) to extract signal characteristics using a variety of different qualitative and quantitative metrics from pre-prandial and postprandial states. As a result, higher statistically significant (p < 0.05*) were found in the DWT models based on power spectral density (PSD) analysis in both states. We also present that the correlations between EGG metrics and the presence of FD, D-GP, and CT symptoms were inconsistent. This paper represents that EGG assessments of FD and D-GP patients differ from healthy controls in terms of abnormalities of gastric motility. Additionally, we demonstrate that diverse datasets showed adequate gastric motility responses to a meal. We anticipate that our method will provide a comprehensive understanding of gastric motility disorders for better treatment and monitoring in both clinical and research settings. In conclusion, we present potential future opportunities for precise gastrointestinal electrophysiological disorders.

Mucocutaneous Manifestations and Associated Factors in Patients with Crohn's Disease.

BACKGROUND: One-third of all extraintestinal manifestations are mucocutaneous findings in patients with Crohn's disease and there is a relationship between some risk factors. Our aim is to evaluate factors associated with mucocutaneous manifestations in our cohort of patients with Crohn's disease with a follow-up duration of up to 25 years. METHODS: In the study, 336 patients with Crohn's disease who were followed up between March 1986 and October 2011 were included. The demographic characteristics, Crohn's disease-related data, and accompanying mucocutaneous manifestations were recorded. The cumulative probability of mucocutaneous extraintestinal manifestations and possible risk factors were analyzed. RESULTS: Oral and skin involvement were detected in 109 (32%) and 31 (9.2%) patients, respectively. The cumulative probability of developing oral and skin manifestations were 43.2% and 20.3%, respectively. Cox regression analysis showed that female gender (odds ratio: 3.28, 95% CI: 1.51-7.14, P = .003) and corticosteroid use (odds ratio: 7.88, 95% CI: 1.07-57.97, P = .043) are independently associated with the development of skin manifestations, while family history (odds ratio: 3.59, 95% CI: 2.18-5.93, P < .001) and inflammatory-type disease (odds ratio: 1.776, 95% CI: 1.21-2.61, P = .004) were independently associated with the development of oral ulcers. CONCLUSION: Mucocutaneous extraintestinal manifestations are associated with female gender, corticosteroid use, family history, and disease type in a large cohort of patients with Crohn's disease. Defining the specific relationships of immune-mediated diseases will help to better understand the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease and associated mucocutaneous manifestations and to use more effective treatments.

Electrogastrography in Patients with Functional Dyspepsia, Joint Hypermobility, and Diabetic Gastroparesis.

BACKGROUND: Transcutaneous electrogastrography is a novel modality to assess the human stomach's gastric myoelectrical activity. The purpose of this study was to compare functional dyspepsia, joint hypermobility, and diabetic gastroparesis patients with healthy control subjects in terms of gastric motility abnormalities through electrogastrography evaluations, and to then evaluate the correlation among variations in their blood parameters. METHODS: This study analyzed 120 subjects with functional dyspepsia (n = 30), joint hypermobility (n = 30), diabetic gastroparesis (n = 30), and control subjects (n = 30). The electrogastrography parameters included the dominant frequency, dominant power, power ratio, and instability coefficient, which were analyzed preprandially and postprandially. Although there are similar studies in the literature, there is no other study in which all groups have been studied together, as in our study. RESULTS: The electrogastrography results showed that preprandial dominant frequency (P = .031*), dominant power (P = .047*), and instability coefficient (P = .043*), and postprandial dominant frequency (P = .041*) and dominant power (P = .035*) results were statistically significant among the functional dyspepsia, joint hypermobility, diabetic gastroparesis, and control groups. There was no significant difference found in terms of power ratio (P = .114) values. However, only glucose (P = .04*) and calcium (P = .04*) levels showed statistical significance. Several blood tests including hemoglobin (P = .032*), creatinine (P= .045*), calcium (P = .037*), potassium (P= .041*), white blood cells (P = .038*), and alanine aminotransferase (P = .031*) also showed correlation with the dominant frequency, power ratio, and instability coefficient parameters. CONCLUSIONS: This joint methodology demonstrated that it is possible to differentiate between functional dyspepsia, joint hypermobility, and diabetic gastroparesis patients from healthy subjects by using electrogastrography. Moreover, the majority of patients showed adequate gastric motility in response to food.

Analysis of the quadratus lumborum muscle activity on leg length discrepancy: A randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Quadratus lumborum (QL) discrete region extensions might change depending on whether leg length discrepancy (LLD) individually has any extra erector spinae action in the lumbar spine, which can result in serious injury to the lower extremities and lumbar vertebrae. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate the effect of QL muscle activity on LLD by using electromyography (EMG) signals. METHODS: The study employed a randomized controlled design. A total of 100 right-handed volunteers were included in this study. All participants were assessed manually by tape measurement for LLD. EMG signals were recorded during the resting and maximal isometric contraction positions to determine QL muscle activity. The power spectral density (PSD) methods were applied to compute EMG signals. RESULTS: In maximal isometric contraction position, comparing the short right LLD (Right side = 0.00064 ± 0.00001, Left side = 0.00033 ± 0.0006) and short left LLD (Right side = 0.00001 ± 0.00008, Left side = 0.00017 ± 0.0001), it was found that the short right LLD group had significantly increased PSD of EMG values. In resting position, the short right LLD (Right side = 0.0002 ± 0.0073, Left side = 0.00016 ± 0.0065) had significantly increased PSD of EMG compared to the short left LLD (Right side = 0.00004 ± 0.0003, Left side = 0.0001 ± 0.0008) values of the QL muscle activity. The results of both groups were also statistically significant (p< 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The present study showed that it is possible to determine effective experimental interventions for functional LLD using EMG signal analysis of QL muscle activity on an asymptomatic normal population.

Analysis of gastric myoelectrical activity from the electrogastrogram signals based on wavelet transform and line length feature.

Electrogastrogram is used for the abdominal surface measurement of the gastric electrical activity of the human stomach. The electrogastrogram technique has significant value as a clinical tool because careful electrogastrogram signal recordings and analyses play a major role in determining the propagation and coordination of gastric myoelectric abnormalities. The aim of this article is to evaluate electrogastrogram features calculated by line length features based on the discrete wavelet transform method to differentiate healthy control subjects from patients with functional dyspepsia and diabetic gastroparesis. For this analysis, the discrete wavelet transform method was used to extract electrogastrogram signal characteristics. Next, line length features were calculated for each sub-signal, which reflect the waveform dimensionality variations and represent a measure of sensitivity to differences in signal amplitude and frequency. The analysis was carried out using a statistical analysis of variance test. The results obtained from the line length analysis of the electrogastrogram signal prove that there are significant differences among the functional dyspepsia, diabetic gastroparesis, and control groups. The electrogastrogram signals of the control subjects had a significantly higher line length than those of the functional dyspepsia and diabetic gastroparesis patients. In conclusion, this article provides new methods with increased accuracy obtained from electrogastrogram signal analysis. The electrogastrography is an effective and non-stationary method to differentiate diabetic gastroparesis and functional dyspepsia patients from the control group. The proposed method can be considered a key test and an essential computer-aided diagnostic tool for detecting gastric myoelectric abnormalities in diabetic gastroparesis and functional dyspepsia patients.