Relapsing polychondritis (RP) with tracheobronchial involvement has a poor prognosis, and a delay in diagnosis increases morbidity and mortality; however, the diagnosis is difficult to make. Endobronchial ultrasonography (EBUS) revealed changes in the tracheobronchial cartilage in two patients who met the criteria for RP, and facilitated the diagnosis. In these cases, EBUS revealed a poorly def...

Alternative pathways to the VEGF, such as hepatocyte growth factor or HGF/c-met, are emerging as key players in tumor angiogenesis and resistance to anti-VEGF therapies. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of a combination strategy targeting the VEGF and c-met pathways in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) models. Male SCID mice (8/group) were implanted with 786-O tumor pieces ...

Results Sixty six cases (71,2% female) met the inclusion criteria. Average age of RP onset was 12,5y with median duration of 3,6y. RP was associated to: erythema pernio (34,8%), inter-phalangeal joints pain (30.3%), hands edema (28,8%), acrocyanosis (18,2%), profuse sweating (12,1% ) and trophic changes of fingers pulp (10,6%.). Antinuclear antibodies (ANA) were titled in 64 patients (97%), bei...

BACKGROUND To report the predictive value of nail-fold capillaroscopy (NFC) patterns of vasculopathy for systemic sclerosis (Scleroderma; SSc) in an unselected cohort of patients with Raynaud's phenomenon (RP). METHODS Patients referred to a tertiary SSc clinic with RP were evaluated by light/video-NFC. Clinical diagnosis, details and serology were recorded. Primary RP was defined as RP with ...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE Active surveillance (AS) has become an accepted alternative for patients with low risk prostate cancer. The purpose of AS is to defer definitive therapy in these patients to avoid treatment-related complications. Our aim was to determine the pathological features of the surgical specimen from potential AS candidates that underwent radical prostatectomy (RP). MATERIA...

OBJECTIVE To perform a meta-analysis of eligible studies from multiple medical centers to assess the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of robotic-assisted pancreatectomy (RP). METHODS We searched the electronic databases PubMed and EMBASE for studies comparing RP with laparoscopic pancreatectomy (LP) and open pancreatectomy (OP) for patients with pancreatic disease from June 2009 to June 2012...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether the time from biopsy to radical prostatectomy (RP) predicts the biochemical recurrence (BCR) after RP, as men diagnosed with clinically localized prostate cancer have several available treatment options and investigating these alternatives may delay the initiation of definitive therapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS We identified 3969 consecutive patients who had RP for c...

Objectives To systematically review studies comparing extraperitoneal (E-RP) and transperitoneal minimally invasive radical prostatectomy (T-RP). Methods The systematic review was performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines in September 2015. Several databases were searched including Medline and Scopus. Only studies compari...

A high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method was developed for the simultaneous determination of metformin (MET) and pioglitazone (PIO) in dogs. To increase the reliability of the method, moroxydine (IS-1) and rosiglitazone (IS-2) were used as internal standards for MET and PIO, respectively. The analytes were extracted from beagle dog plasma by a one-step protein pr...