Biomedical subjects
E Lattanzio
Publications and source records attributed to E Lattanzio.
[State of the art and ways of progress in senology].
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Alexithymia and breast cancer. Survey of 200 women undergoing mammography.
The Schalling Sifneos Personality Scale (SSPS) and the Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire (MHQ) have been used in 381 women just before mammography at the Breast Center of the Radiology Institute, University of Bari (Italy). Of the 200 women who accepted to complete the questionnaires 13 were found positive for cancer. Student's t test comparison of the mean SSPS and MHQ scores of the positive for cancer with the negative showed that women with breast cancer have more pronounced alexithymic but not neurotic traits. Our findings suggest that patients with cancer may have something in common with those suffering from so-called psychosomatic pathologies who have a constrained imagination and fantasy and difficulty in verbalizing their emotions. Thus, this study indicates a relationship between alexithymia and cancer.
Breast cancer diagnosis under the age of forty years.
The authors report on a multicentric consecutive series of 382 cases of primary breast cancer detected before the age of 40 years. Physical examination (PE) was always performed, whereas other diagnostic tests were performed in selected cases, namely mammography (M) in 334, fine needle aspiration cytology (CYT) in 188 and thermography (TH) in 123 cases. Single tests showed a high rate of false-negative/benign cases (PE, 0.23; M, 0.26; CYT, 0.37 and TH, 0.50), especially when the T1 subgroup was considered (PE, 0.34; M, 0.38; CYT, 0.42 and TH, 0.78). The poor results recorded for TH make its current diagnostic use highly questionable. The policy of extensive biopsy of all "dubious" benign lesions on PE allowed for the detection of 41 of 382 cancers and reduced the PE false-negative/benign rate to 0.12 for the total or 0.15 for T1 cancers, although about 80 unnecessary biopsies for each cancer detected were performed in this way. The association of PE to one or more tests resulted in even lower false-negative rates (0.06 for the total, 0.10 for T1 cancers). The authors criticize the aggressive policy of extensive biopsy recommendation based only on a dubious report on PE alone and stress the opportunity of the routine association of M and CYT to PE, since this combination seems to achieve a higher breast cancer detection rate even in this age group.
["Breast charter 2004". Diagnostic approach to breast pathology].
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