Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M De Waele.
We report the case of a newborn girl with antithrombin III deficiency type 1. The clinical features of a hypercoagulable condition that lead to this rare diagnosis differed from the reports in the literature, since the primary thromboembolic incident resulted in neonatal myocardial infarction, which is in itself a rare condition during the first days of life.
D-dimers (DD), specific degradation products of crosslinked fibrin, are markers for activation of plasma coagulation and/or fibrinolysis. DD results below the cut-off level are proven to be useful to rule out the probable diagnosis of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and/or pulmonary embolism (PE). Our objective was to demonstrate that positive DD occur in many diseases and certain physiological conditions as high age and pregnancy and to look for gradations in positivity between different pathological conditions. We wanted to investigate the request attitude of our clinicians concerning DD. Positive DD results still confuse some physicians. Retrospectively, we examined medical records of 574 consecutive patients, in whom plasma DD were measured in daily routine. Both outpatients (n = 423) and inpatients (n = 151) were included. We noted their clinically predominant disease. Measurement of DD concentration is too often requested by clinicians, in any medical condition, and is not always clinically relevant. The relation of a positive result and the clinical problem is sometimes not understood. Overall, we found 64% DD positivity with a median concentration of 775 micrograms/L. We found elevated DD concentrations in various clinical conditions.
BACKGROUND: The diagnosis of pulmonary involvement in hematologic malignancies (PHM) has traditionally necessitated large specimens (usually invasive or surgically obtained biopsies). The development of reliable immunocytologic identification techniques allows diagnosis on noninvasively obtained cellular material, including bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid. Since 1985, 12 such cases have been reported. CASES: Three cases of B-cell-related PHM were diagnosed by means of BAL fluid cellular analysis using the immunogold-silver staining technique. CONCLUSION: This is the first report showing immunogold-silver staining to be a reliable immunocytochemical identification technique for monoclonal B-cell populations recovered by BAL.
By using the microsuction technique, a quantitative determination of eosinophil cationic protein (ECP) in nasal secretions was performed in 18 atopic patients and 10 healthy volunteers. The percentage of the eosinophils was counted by simple microscopic examination. In the control group, results showed that the percentage of the eosinophils was almost 0 (range: 0-0.7%), and the median baseline ECP concentration was measured at 105 ng/g (range: 2-281 ng/g). No significant changes in either eosinophils or ECP were observed in this group. In the patient group, there existed a significantly higher baseline percentage of eosinophils (median: 2.7%, range: 0-45%) than in the control group but not for baseline ECP concentration (median: 160 ng/g, range: 6-1475 ng/g). One hour after nasal allergen challenge (NAC), a significant (P < 0.01) increase was seen in the percentage of eosinophils of the nasal secretions and this was remained for 10 hours (median: 5.5-13.3%). However, the difference that occurred was that ECP reached its highest concentration (median: 401 ng/g, range: 32-2298 ng/g) only 24 hours after NAC, while the percentage of the eosinophils decreased. Our findings again support a role of migration and activation of eosinophils in the pathogenesis of nasal allergic reaction, especially during the late phase.