Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A Basso.
The presence of associated incisional and groin hernias is relatively rare and it represents an important problem in surgical treatment. The authors here report their experience of three patients treated with no reabsorbable prostheses placed according to Rives' technique for incisional hernias, and according to Stoppa's for inguinal hernias.
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Approximately 2 weeks after accidental overexposure to X-ray radiation, a worker developed acute radiodermatitis on fingers of both hands. Exposure simulation indicated that total ionizing radiation absorbed by his fingers amounted to about 20 Gy. After 2 years, acute radiodermatitis evolved to chronicity of lesions with presence of atrophic skin, teleangiectasia, alopecia, and dyskeratosis on three right-hand fingers. Cytogenetic dosimetry of peripheral blood lymphocytes, performed 2 months after acute radiation, showed an increase of micronuclei (7% vs. 1 +/- 0.4% according to laboratory reference data). The increase was ascribed to the high dose of ionizing radiation absorbed by circulating lymphocytes in the vessels of overexposed tissues. The cytogenetic examination was repeated 27 months after acute irradiation; it was found that the percentage of micronuclei had been restored to within reference levels. The possibility of using cytogenetic dosimetry, following acute partial exposure to X-rays, not just as an indicator of previous exposure, but also as an indicator of the absorbed radiation dose is examined. Lastly, the possible stochastic effects that may set in on the skin of the affected fingers and the need for periodically monitoring the evolution of chronic skin lesions, are discussed.
In this paper we report the perseverative behavior of two aphasic patients, AB and MT. They were submitted to a standardized Language Examination and to verbal and nonverbal tasks designed to elicit perseveration. Some of the features pointed out in the literature were not confirmed. Perseveration was not semantically related to the target; a correct response did not have any special status; in many instances the perseveration had not been produced as a correct response and could reappear immediately or after many stimuli; the production of two consecutive correct responses did not inhibit the spontaneous recurrences and could again be followed by the perseveration of a previous wrong response. Perseveration did not set in in the same circumstances for the two patients: in AB it set in when the patient was unable to find the correct response; MT, on the contrary, while knowing the correct response, was unable to change her perseverative behavior from one response to the other. For both patients, however, it seems as if no inhibitory system stops pre-existing motor or verbal behavior.
Impaired naming is a common finding in aphasia but while it is known that naming errors diminish over time, longitudinal studies are rare. In this retrospective study, naming errors of 84 vascular aphasic patients are studied. Errors in oral and written confrontation naming tasks in two successive evaluations are tabulated and coded into one of 10 error types. No Response, Word-Finding Difficulty, Semantic Paraphasia, Unrelated Paraphasia, Phonemic/Orthographic Paraphasia, Neologism, Paraphasic Jargon, Phonemic/Neologistic Jargon, Stereotypy, and Other. All analyses were carried out on the difference scores, that is, the score in the second examination minus the score in the first examination. Results indicate that there is a significant decrease of No Responses (in oral and written naming) and Neologisms (in oral naming), and a significant increase of Orthographic Paraphasias in written naming. Moreover, the difference score for Phonemic/Orthographic Paraphasias was higher in written than oral naming. The difference scores for the other types of error were not statistically significant.
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Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Pituitary metastases constitute 1% to 8.3% of all metastatic brain tumors. The most frequent localization is in the posterior lobe and diabetes insipidus may be the only symptom of dysfunction. Cerebral aspergillosis is an unusual disease and it has been described complicating an underlying malignancy or following intracraneal surgery. We describe a case of hypopituitarism and hyperprolactinemia in a patient with pituitary metastases of a colon carcinoma and aspergillosis. Two years before a colon adenocarcinoma (Class C1 of Duke) had been resected. There were no clinical signs of hypopituitarism or galactorrea. The laboratory findings showed deficiency of cortocotropin (ACTH), luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and slight hyperprolactinemia (PRL). Cerebral magnetic resonance image (MRI) revealed an intra and suprasellar mass which extended to the hypothalamus. Chest X-ray film and computed tomographic scanning (TC) confirmed a macronodular mass at the apical segment of the inferior left lung lobule with mediastinal hypertrophic lymph nodes. A non functional pituitary tumor was diagnosed and transphenoidal surgery was carried out. At microscopic examination a malignant proliferation was found suggesting colonic differentiation. Fragments of tumoral pituitary tissue showed hyphae of aspergillus in the form of abscess. Aspergillosis complicating neoplastic disease is more often present in leukemia and lymphoma than in solid tumors.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Against a clinical score we compared the effectiveness of three biochemical markers of acromegalic activity: a) growth hormone response to i.v. thyrotropin-releasing hormone, b) growth hormone suppression one hour after an oral glucose load, c) basal plasma IGF-I levels. In 21 patients we obtained 39 observations comprising the four parameters. According to the clinical score, patients were divided into three groups: group I = patients before surgery; group II = improved but still clinically active; group III = clinically inactive. After i.v. thyrotropin-releasing hormone, abnormal observations increased although the patients improved clinically, so that this test was excluded from statistical analysis. Abnormalities in plasma IGF-I levels and in GH suppression after oral glucose were similarly frequent in the groups studied: both 100% in group I, both 71.4% in group II, 27.3% vs. 18.2% in group III (p > 0.05). Both tests made exactly the same contribution to the other's capacity to detect acromegalic activity: 3 out of 39 observations (5.1%). We conclude that basal plasma IGF-I is the single best biochemical marker to detect acromegalic activity, since it is statistically at least as useful as growth hormone suppression, and is far more simple for the patient and the laboratory.
In western countries the elderly are those who experience the major impact of cancer, as epidemiologic data clearly show. Thus, secondary prevention of cancer (SPC) in older persons deserves more attention than it has received until now. Target subjects, however, are often reluctant to enter SPC plans. The reasons range from the lack of knowledge about the importance of SPC to the underevaluation of the risk of cancer, or, even more often, to the anxiety and fear that may stem from such a clinical investigation. In this context, the intervention known as counseling finds its natural and essential role. In the paper some general considerations on the significance of medical counseling is given, with particular emphasis on its role in SPC in the elderly. The analysis herein reported points out the specific skills and methods that physicians can adopt to cope with the eventually adverse influences that may affect the participation of the elderly in SPC initiatives. However, such action should avoid any paternalistic approach and respect the patient's will and autonomy.
Searching for differences in gene expression between different types of human pituitary adenomas, we evaluated the concentration of mRNA from hormonal genes (prolactin and growth hormone) and oncogenes (c-myc and c-fos) in 12 growth hormone-secreting 7 prolactin-secreting and 11 nonsecreting adenomas. We found a positive correlation between clinical diagnoses and hormonal gene expression in all the cases. Our reports indicate the presence of c-myc and c-fos mRNA in all the adenomas evaluated. The concentration of c-myc mRNA was higher in somatotrophic adenomas than in prolactinomas and nonsecreting adenomas whereas c-fos mRNA concentration was similar in the different types of tumours analysed. Oncogenes products, in turn, might stimulate DNA synthesis and cell proliferation and eventually lead to the formation of pituitary adenomas. This is a working hypothesis.
This study aimed to verify the existence of a double aphasia/apraxia dissociation. Apraxic patients without aphasia and aphasic patients without apraxia were included in a consecutive series of patients with cortical or subcortical CT documented vascular lesions in the left hemisphere. Of 699 patients, 10 were found to be apraxic but not aphasic and 149 aphasic but not apraxic. These findings indicate an aphasia/apraxia double dissociation. This suggests that praxis and language make use of two different, partly overlapping networks.
We previously found that the beta-adrenoceptor (beta AR) density of lymphocytes from thyroidectomized adult women shows a significant decrease early after surgery, followed by a slower recovery kinetics. In the present article, we posed the question whether the kinetics of lymphocyte beta ARs from thyroidectomized patients could be dependent upon the age of the donors. Thus, postsurgical decrease and the following recovery of beta AR density were studied in thyroidectomized female patients of different ages, along with the time course of triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) levels. The kinetics were analyzed using a mathematical model fitting experimental data. Results show that parallel statistically significant falls in beta AR density and T3 levels are present in every age group tested from 1 to 3 days following surgical intervention. No statistically significant changes have been observed in T4 levels. The recovery of beta AR density shows progressively slower kinetics with increasing patient age. In particular, a parameter estimating the time required to regain 50% of the fall in beta AR density increases exponentially with advancing age. T3 levels show a recovery trend quite similar to that of beta AR density, but the kinetics is slower and does not present any statistically significant age-related changes. The kinetics of T4 levels are completely different, showing a continuous slowly decreasing trend. Thus, the beta AR fall can be accounted for only by a decrease in T3 levels. On the contrary, the comparison of T3 and beta AR kinetics suggests that receptor recovery is also mediated by other regulatory factors. T4 levels do not appear to have any direct role in both fall and recovery of beta ARs.
We have recently proposed a mathematical model of survival mortality kinetics. It is based on biological and statistical hypotheses and is able to fit survivorship curves even at advanced ages, where other models fail. The mathematical function contains two parameters, omega and So, related to deterministic and stochastic factors, respectively. In the present paper the model has been applied to a set of survival curves of Drosophila melanogaster. The different curves derived from populations of flies treated with different doses of the antioxidant thiazolidine carboxylic acid (TCA). The treatment induced a significant progressive increase of mean and maximum lifespan up to the TCA dietary concentration of 0.3%. Higher doses of TCA, on the contrary, were toxic, reducing both mean and maximum lifespan. An interpretation of the differential TCA effects has been attempted on the basis of the values assumed by the two model parameters.
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