Urinary incontinence is characterized by the involuntary leakage of urine. The primary cause of stress urinary incontinence in women is the weakening of the pelvic floor muscles. Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is a significant global health problem that impacts mainly middle-aged women, with a severe impact on their quality of life. Traditional diagnostic methods and treatments often fail, although technological innovations have improved diagnostic accuracy, such as specific questionnaires or transperineal ultrasound. While medical therapies and surgical procedures are continuously being developed, controversies about the correct choices regarding diagnostic and treatment methods continue to exist. The aim of our review was to identify the innovative diagnostic tools and effective treatment procedures for SUI. A narrative review was conducted due to the heterogeneity of the studies. New methods for diagnosis and treatment have gained ground, and we have covered them in our review; however, the field continues to expand. A personalized approach to diagnosis is also a requirement because of the limitations of conventional urodynamic studies, and we emphasize the importance of such personalization in enhancing clinical decision making. Future medical strategies that combine both preventive and therapeutic care are desirable. Newer technologies were brought to light in this review, including stem cell therapy and laser therapy.
Endometriosis is a benign disease but with malignant behavior, sharing numerous features with cancers. Endometriosis is the development of endometrial tissue outside the uterus, with the presence of both glands and stroma. Approximately 10% of women of reproductive age suffer from endometriosis; it involves high social costs and affects the patient’s quality of life. In this review, we attempt to capture the pathogenesis mechanisms that are common to endometriosis and cancer based on molecular biology, focusing more on the principle of immunological changes and stemness. Clinical applicability will consist of targeted treatments that represent future directions in these diseases, which impose a burden on the healthcare system. Unlike endometriosis, cancer is a disease with fatal evolution, with conventional treatment based on chemo/radiotherapy. Here, we focus on the niche of personalized treatments that target molecular pathways. Our findings show that, in both pathologies, the resistance to treatments is due to the stemness of the stem cells, which might play a role in the appearance and evolution of both diseases. More research is needed before we can draw firm conclusions.
Preeclampsia is a common pregnancy complication that may threaten the health of pregnant women and their fetuses. Intrauterine growth restriction is the most serious complication in fetal development observed in preeclampsia. In their later years, women with preeclampsia are at risk of cardiovascular disease. The use of multiple biomarkers can usually improve diagnostic performance. Currently, S100A8 and S100A9 are gaining increased attention as inflammatory markers of preeclampsia. Our review aims to present an integrated view of the potential role of S100A8/A9 in the physiopathology of preeclampsia. We also explored the potential role as biomarker or in targeted treatment. At the moment, there is no efficient treatment for PE other than birth. Understanding the pathological mechanisms and the importance of calprotectin can shape a new strategy for large-scale approaches to change diagnostic and therapeutic management. The value of the calcium binding proteins S100A8/A9 as a potential prognostic biomarker in placental disfunctions based on malperfusion has not yet been investigated. Encouraging results have been obtained in experimental and clinical interventional studies with S100A8/A9 blockers as a form of therapeutic management for autoimmune disease and cancer. It may also be limited because of safety issues for the fetus. However, future investigations can emerge.
Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with various morphologies and molecular features, and it is the second leading cause of cancer death in women in developed countries. According to the literature, we currently lack both prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets. The most important prognostic factors are disease stage and Nottingham grade. We conducted a retrospective analysis involving 273 patients with BC who underwent neoadjuvant therapy before proceeding to curative surgical treatment between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2023. Pathological procedures were conducted at the Department of Pathology, Emergency County Hospital of Targu Mureș, Romania. A statistical analysis was performed. Regarding the relationship between Nottingham grade and Ki67, grade I was associated with a Ki67 of less than 14. The relationship between tumor grade and luminal was similar (p = 0.0001): Grade I was associated with luminal A. Regarding TNM stage, it was statistically significantly correlated with TILs (p = 0.01) and RCB (p = 0.0001). Stages III and IV were associated with a high RCB and poor prognosis. Regarding the prognostic value, Nottingham grade 3 and TNM stages III and IV were correlated with low overall survival and disease-free survival, with poor prognosis, and, among the molecular variables, RCB played the most important prognostic role.
1 June 2018 in International conference KNOWLEDGE-BASED ORGANIZATION
The paper proposes a design solution for a low cost device with feedback for upper extremity rehabilitation after a stroke event. Cerebral vascular accident (CVA) or stroke is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. CVA is the most important cause of long-term disability in Europe, and demographic changes have led to an increase in both incidence and prevalence of this. Most secondary stroke disability is recovered in a few months, but others may persist for life. The rehabilitation should be started as soon as there is a greater chance of recovery in this early stage. Disabilities get worse and remain permanent over time, which is why is recommended the establishment of a rehabilitation program as soon as possible. Today, the use of virtual reality environments allow patients to perform tasks that mimic real life in rehabilitation clinics, but it tends increasingly more in the future these tasks can be done at home, sending data and receiving feedback from doctors. The devices presented in this paper are not only mechanical devices that allow the movement on a certain direction with predetermined effort degree for the patient, possibly controlled by the force of the muscle activity (EMG), but are innovative devices with the possibility to record a full set of biomedical signals. The patient device can record one or more biomedical parameters such as electrocardiography (ECG), heart rate (HR), electromyography (EMG), non-invasive blood pressure (NIBP), oxygen concentration in the blood (SpO2), movement speed and acceleration, angle of motion of a body extremity, torsion, s.a. according to the physician’s prescription and the patient needs. This means that the patient device will be very flexible and can communicate with other medical devices for home use
This paper presents the implementation and evaluation of a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture applied to the power engineering domain. A scanned Romanian textbook on the reliability of energy installations serves as input data, requiring Optical Character Recognition (OCR) preprocessing. The extracted text has been segmented into chunks, embedded using a sentence-transformer model, and indexed in a FAISS vector database, with GPT-4o used for generation. The embedding space analysis reveals distinct thematic clusters, confirming semantic coherence despite OCR-induced noise. The evaluation results demonstrate that RAG architectures can provide valuable domain-specific insights even when operating on imperfect legacy engineering documentation.