Coronary angioplasty in acute myocardial infarction: Should it be done? to whom? when?

Coronary revascularization, when it needs to be done it needs to be done.

Rapid advances in the fields of diagnostic and therapeutic cardiology have led to an increase in health care costs. This has resulted in cost curtailing measures imposed by health care managers, based on assumptions that utilization of these methods do not provide commensurate increases in health benefits (over-use). To control the presumably spiralling costs of health care, practice guidelines...

Immediate coronary angioplasty for acute myocardial infarction.

Tubeless Percutaneous Nephrolithotripsy: When it should be done?

Percutaneous Nephrolithotripsy (PCNL) has become a standard method to approach large urinary stones (over 2cm) located in the kidney or proximal ureter. Among the minimal invasive urological procedures, PCNL still remains as the most morbid treatment. The routine of using post-operative nephrostomy is still controversial, and some authors supports that tubeless PCNL could be as safe as standard...

Atrial fibrillation complicating acute myocardial infarction: how should it be interpreted and how should it be treated and prevented?

Atrial fibrillation (AF) has been reported to complicate the course of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in 6–21% of hospitalized patients. Possible precipitating factors of AF in this setting include atrial ischaemia or infarction, right ventricular infarction, pericardial inflammation, acute hypoxia or hypokalaemia, and haemodynamic impairment secondary to left ventricular (LV) dysfunction. E...

Laparoscopic Appendectomy: Why It Should Be Done

OBJECTIVE Notwithstanding its widely perceived advantages, laparoscopic appendectomy has not yet met with universal acceptance. The aim of the present work is to illustrate retrospectively the results of a case-control experience with laparoscopic versus open appendectomy carried out at our institution. METHODS Between January 1993 and November 2000, 555 patients (M:F = 210:345; mean age 25.2...