Hepatic resection: the last surgical frontier for colorectal cancer.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Paul Mansfield.
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Primary angiosarcomas of the spleen are rare and almost always fatal. With no more than 200 cases reported in the literature worldwide, no specific risk factors are strongly associated with the disease. The mean age of patients at presentation is 59 years and the major clinical findings include abdominal pain, splenic rupture, and splenomegaly. Grossly, this neoplasm appears as hemorrhagic and/or cystic nodules, with a low-density signal seen on computed tomographic scans. Histologically, the tumor is characterized by neoplastic proliferation with diffuse or focal areas of a vasoformative component with cavernous and arborizing channels. The vascular spaces are lined by endothelial cells with variable degree of atypia. The differential diagnosis includes a variety of benign and malignant vascular proliferations (littoral cell angioma and Kaposi's sarcoma) as well as metastatic tumors. The worst prognostic factor is splenic rupture with early metastasis. The liver is the most common site. We report a case of the 43-year-old woman with a long-standing history of recurrent ovarian carcinoma treated with surgery and multiple courses of radiation therapy and chemotherapy who clinically appeared to have a metastatic ovarian cancer to the spleen and treated with partial resection of stomach and splenectomy. However, histopathologic examination of the specimen showed the tumor to be of a primary angiosarcoma. We believe that the lengthy exposure to radiation may have played a role in the histopathogenesis of this neoplasm in this patient.
PURPOSE: To evaluate the efficacy of long-term nontunneled silicone catheters impregnated with minocycline and rifampin (M-R) in reducing catheter-related bloodstream infections. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This prospective, randomized, double-blind clinical trial was conducted at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, a tertiary care hospital in Houston, TX. All patients in the trial had a malignancy. RESULTS: Between September 1999 and May 2002, 356 assessable catheters were used: 182 M-R and 174 nonimpregnated. The patients' characteristics were comparable between the two study groups. The mean (+/- standard deviation) duration of catheterization with M-R catheters was comparable to that of nonimpregnated catheters (66.21 +/- 30.88 v 63.01 +/- 30.80 days). A total of 17 catheter-related bloodstream infections occurred during the course of the study. Three were associated with the use of M-R catheters and 14 were associated with the nonimpregnated catheters, with a rate of catheter-related bloodstream infection of 0.25 and 1.28/1,000 catheter-days, respectively (P = .003). Gram-positive cocci accounted for the majority of the organisms causing the infections. There were no allergic reactions associated with M-R catheters. CONCLUSION: Long-term nontunneled central venous catheters impregnated with minocycline and rifampin are efficacious and safe in reducing catheter-related bloodstream infections in cancer patients.
The biological and clinical behaviors of cancer are affected by multiple molecular pathways that are under the control of transcription factors. Improved understanding of how transcription factors affect cancer biology may lead to improved ability to predict clinical outcome and discovery of novel therapeutic strategies. We evaluated the relationship between Sp1 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression, as well as their effect on survival in 86 cases of resected human gastric cancer. The degree of VEGF expression correlated highly with Sp1 expression (P < 0.01). Patients with high Sp1 expression were 98 times more likely to have high VEGF expression compared with those with negative Sp1 expression. Clinically, negative or weak Sp1 expression was associated with early stage (IA) in gastric cancer. Strong Sp1 expression was more frequently observed among patients with stage IB-IV disease (P = 0.035). Similarly, whereas strong Sp1 expression was uncommonly observed among patients with N0 or N1 disease (19 and 16%), N2/N3 gastric cancer was associated with strong Sp1 expression (48%; P = 0.034). Strong Sp1 expression was also associated with inferior survival. The median survival duration in patients who had a tumor with a negative, weak, and strong Sp1 expression was 44, 38, and 8 months (P = 0.0075), respectively, whereas patients with strong VEGF expression had a shorter survival duration; the difference was not statistically significant. When Sp1 and VEGF expression, stage, completeness of resection, histology, and patient age were entered in a Cox proportional hazards model, strong Sp1 expression (P = 0.021) and an advanced disease stage (P < 0.001) were independently prognostic of poor survival. Given the importance of Sp1 in the expression of VEGF, our data suggest that dysregulated Sp1 expression and activation play important roles in VEGF overexpression and, thus, gastric cancer development and progression.
BACKGROUND: Although the utility of lymphatic mapping (LM) and sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy in patients with melanoma and breast carcinoma has been well documented, this same is not true for patients with colon carcinoma. The authors previously reported a high false-negative rate for SLN biopsy in patients with colon carcinoma using isosulfan blue dye alone. The objective of the current study was to determine whether radiocolloid would increase the sensitivity of LM/SLN biopsy in patients with colon carcinoma. METHODS: The authors performed LM on 57 patients with colon carcinoma using both isosulfan blue dye and radiocolloid. The SLN(s) were identified by either their blue color or by increased radioactivity. The SLNs then underwent both routine histologic sectioning and immunohistochemical (IHC) staining for cytokeratins. RESULTS: An SLN was identified in 56 patients (98%). Radiocolloid was able to identify only 1 additional positive SLN (9%). Overall, it was found that the disease had metastasized to the lymph nodes in 22 patients, even though there was no evidence of disease in the SLN(s) in 11 of those 22 patients on routine histologic sectioning (false-negative rate, 50%; sensitivity, 50%). In five patients, IHC of the SLN was the only indicator of metastatic disease. The inclusion of IHC-positive SLNs in these calculations would decrease the false-negative rate to 17% and would increase the sensitivity of SLN biopsy to 83%. CONCLUSIONS: In the current study, the addition of radiocolloid did not increase the sensitivity of detection of positive SLN(s) compared with the use of isosulfan blue dye alone. IHC of the SLN potentially may increase the sensitivity of LM and reduce the false-negative rate. However, the long-term prognostic significance of IHC in patients with colon carcinoma remains controversial.