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Our aim in this study was to evaluate the relationship between metabolic syndrome (MS) as defined by different criteria and the severity of coronary lesions in a sample of diabetic and non-diabetic patients undergoing elective coronary angiography. All patients had blood and urine tests, physical examinations were performed before angiography, and finally they were classified based on three criteria (World Health Organisation-WHO, Adult Treatment Panel-ATP III and International Diabetes Federation-IDF). Eighty-eight patients were diabetic, and 96 patients were non-diabetic. Among all patients, diabetics had significantly higher Gensini scores (P < 0.001). According to WHO criteria (P = 0.005) and IDF criteria (P = 0.015) metabolic syndrome patients had higher Gensini scores, but for ATP III criteria difference was not significant. When we evaluated diabetics and non-diabetics separately, non-diabetic patients with MS had significantly higher scores with WHO definition (P = 0.015) and mildly higher but not significant values with other MS criteria (P = 0.057 for both IDF and ATP III). Neither any one of MS components nor gender revealed significant relationship with coronary disease severity. In our study with a cohort of Turkish patients undergoing elective coronary angiography; we concluded that MS should be taken into consideration, especially in non-diabetic patients.

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We used various meta-analytic methods to compare 25 studies describing fine-needle aspiration (FNA) cytologic analyses performed from 1984 to 2007 on palpable breast masses. We found that in the 25 studies examined, the sensitivity ranged from 78% to 100%, the specificity ranged from 76% to 100%, and the diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) ranged from 15.83 to 33 198. The overall diagnostic accuracy was found to be as follows: 0.93 (95% CI: 0.92-0.94) for sensitivity, 0.98 (95% CI: 0.97-0.98) for specificity, and 505.209 (95% CI: 273.08-934.95) for the DOR. The overall diagnostic accuracy according to the results of summary receiving operating characteristic (SROC) curve analysis was 0.95 +/- 0.0032, and the overall weighted area under the (receiving operating characteristic [ROC]) curve (AUC) was 0.99 +/- 0.0014. The DOR values did not show a large variation in the various positivity threshold values. However, the results of those studies had some heterogeneity. The four covariates that were added to the standard SROC model to evaluate variations in the results of the studies were the year of publication, the number of aspirations, the percentage of insufficient material, and the study design. The relative diagnostic accuracy of studies performed after 1990 was 3.98 times higher than that of studies performed before 1990. The relative DOR (RDOR) value was also found to be statistically significant (95% CI: 1.22-13.02). That result may be attributed to the technologic improvements in diagnostic tools over the years. Although it was not statistically significant, an increase in the number of aspirations caused an increase in the RDOR of the FNA cytology (95% CI: 0.52-8.11). In contrast, increasing the percent of insufficient material caused a statistically insignificant but clinically significant decrease in the RDOR of FNA (RDOR = 0.79, 95% CI: 0.21-2.98). In conclusion, our meta-analysis has shown that FNA cytologic analysis of palpable breast masses is highly accurate in the diagnostic differentiation of benign from malignant tumors.