Oxidative stress is the most common factor leading to infertility in men with varicocele. Reactive oxygen species and other markers of oxidative stress are measured to predict the extent of oxidative stress. Thiol groups are important antioxidants and essential molecules protecting organism against the harmful effects of reactive oxygen species. Thiol-disulphide homoeostasis is a unique, easy and new method to demonstrate oxidative stress. The aim of this study was to determine thiol-disulphide homoeostasis as an oxidative stress marker in infertile men with varicocele. The hormonal profile and parameters of thiol-disulphide homoeostasis were studied in 46 infertile men with varicocele, 70 fertile men with varicocele and 37 fertile controls. Infertile men with varicocele had significantly higher disulphide concentrations and disulphide/native thiol, disulphide/total thiol and native/total thiol ratios than those of fertile men with varicocele and fertile controls. According to these results, the blood plasma of patients with varicocele contains excessive oxidative stress, even in men with normospermia, and therefore, thiol-disulphide homoeostasis may be useful as an oxidative stress marker in men with varicocele.

Objective: The pathology of urethral stricture disease is still unclear however progressive inflammation may contribute to the development of urethral stricture. The platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) is a new and simple marker that indicates inflammation. In this study we aimed to investigate the predictive value of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and PLR in patients with urethral stricture who underwent transurethral resection of prostate (TURP). Material and methods:A total of 208 patients who underwent bipolar-TURP were included in this study. Patients who had previously undergone surgery due to any urethral pathology, posterior urethral strictures, previous or ongoing treatment for any cancer, hematologic disorders, presence of an active infection at the time of surgical intervention, and prior blood transfusion were excluded. PLR, NLR and red cell distribution width (RDW) levels were measured. In order to investigate the predictive values of NLR and PLR variables, binary logistic regression analysis was performed. Results:No statistically significant differences were observed between the groups in terms of age, NLR, RDW, prostate size and operative times. Statistically significant differences were presented only in the median PLR-values. For predicting urethral stricture, the optimal cut-off value was 112.5, (sensitivity: 0.84, specificity: 0.64; AUC= 0.762, 95% CI 0.684-0.84). Conclusion:In this study we showed that PLR can be used to determine urethral stricture as a cost-effective, common, and simple biomarker in patients after TURP.Keywords: Inflammation; neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio; platelet to lymphocyte ratio; urethral stricture.Cite this article as: Gül M, Altıntaş E, Kaynar M, Buğday MS, Göktaş S. The predictive value of platelet to lymphocyte and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio in determining urethral stricture after transurethral resection of prostate. Turk J Urol 2017; 43: 325-9

Congenital granular cell tumor or congenital epulis is a rare benign soft tissue lesion in newborns. It usually arises from the mucosa of the gingiva, either from the maxillary or mandibular alveolar ridge, and may cause respiratory or feeding problems. We reported a case of a 1-hour-old female newborn with a congenital granular cell tumor in the anterior maxillary alveolar ridge. The lesion was causing a feeding problem and was excised under general anesthesia when the newborn was 1 day old.

Urinary system stone disease is a common disease group all over the world. Ureteral stones constitute 20% of all urinary system stones. Ureteral stones are important because they can cause hydronephrosis and related renal parenchymal damage in the kidneys. In the study, a hybrid model was developed to detect hydronephrosis and ureteral stones from kidney images. In the developed model, heat maps of the original images were obtained by using gradient‐weighted class activation mapping (Grad‐CAM) technology. Then, feature maps were extracted from both the original and heatmap datasets using the Efficientnetb0 architecture. Extracted feature maps were concatenated using a multimodal fusion technique. In this way, different features of an image are obtained. This has a positive effect on the performance of the model. The Relief dimension reduction technique was used to eliminate unnecessary features in the obtained feature map so that the proposed model can work faster and more effectively. Finally, the optimized feature map is classified in the support vector machine (SVM) classifier. To compare the performance of the proposed hybrid model, results were obtained with 8 state‐of‐the‐art models accepted in the literature. Among these models, the highest accuracy value was achieved in the Efficientnetb0 architecture with 67.98%, whereas the accuracy of the proposed hybrid model was 91.1%. This value indicates that the proposed model can be used for HUN diagnosis.

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