No abstract

The fundamental test for male infertility, semen analysis, is mostly a manually performed subjective and time-consuming process and the use of automated systems has been cost prohibitive. We have previously developed an inexpensive smartphone-based system for at-home male infertility screening through automatic and rapid measurement of sperm concentration and motility. Here, we assessed the feasibility of using a similar smartphone-based system for laboratory use in measuring: a) Hyaluronan Binding Assay (HBA) score, a quantitative score describing the sperm maturity and fertilization potential in a semen sample, b) sperm viability, which assesses sperm membrane integrity, and c) sperm DNA fragmentation that assesses the degree of DNA damage. There was good correlation between the manual analysis and smartphone-based analysis for the HBA score when the device was tested with 31 fresh, unprocessed human semen samples. The smartphone-based approach performed with an accuracy of 87% in sperm classification when the HBA score was set at manufacturer’s threshold of 80. Similarly, the sperm viability and DNA fragmentation tests were also shown to be compatible with the smartphone-based system when tested with 102 and 47 human semen samples, respectively.

OBJECTIVE: Uterine fibroids are an extremely common benign condition among pre-menopausal women and are ideally managed in an outpatient setting or as a planned elective procedure. While there is an abundance of evidence on the prevalence of uterine fibroids, there is little data on where women seek care for these tumors. We investigated the trends in emergency department utilization for uterine fibroids from 2006-2014 and assessed estimated admission rates by insurance status, hospital location, and patient residence for the year 2014.