Perioperative management of drugs commonly used in patients with rheumatic diseases: a review

Rheumatic diseases are very prevalent, affecting about 7 million people in North America; they affect the musculoskeletal system, often with systemic involvement and potential for serious consequences and limitation on quality of life. Clinical treatment is usually long-term and includes drugs that are considered either simple or complex and are occasionally unknown to many health professionals who do not know how to manage these patients in emergency units and surgical wards. Thus, it is important for clinicians, surgeons and anesthesiologists who are involved with rheumatic patients undergoing surgery to know the basic principles of therapy and perioperative management. This study aims to do a review of the perioperative management of the most commonly used drugs in rheumatologic patients. Manuscripts used in this review were identified by surveying MEDLINE, LILACS, EMBASE, and COCHRANE databases and included studies containing i) the perioperative management of commonly used drugs in patients with rheumatic diseases: and ii) rheumatic diseases. They are didactically discussed according to the mechanism of action and pharmacokinetics; and perioperative management. In total, 259 articles related to the topic were identified. Every medical professional should be aware of the types of drugs that are appropriate for continuous use and should know the various effects of these drugs before indicating surgery or assisting a rheumatic patient postoperatively. This information could prevent possible complications that could affect a wide range of patients.

Human islet xenotransplantation in rodents: A literature review of experimental model trends

Among the innovations for the treatment of type 1 diabetes, islet transplantation is a less invasive method of treatment, although it is still in development. One of the greatest barriers to this technique is the low number of pancreas donors and the low number of pancreases that are available for transplantation. Rodent models have been chosen in most studies of islet rejection and type 1 diabetes prevention to evaluate the quality and function of isolated human islets and to identify alternative solutions to the problem of islet scarcity. The purpose of this study is to conduct a review of islet xenotransplantation experiments from humans to rodents, to organize and analyze the parameters of these experiments, to describe trends in experimental modeling and to assess the viability of this procedure. In this study, we reviewed recently published research regarding islet xenotransplantation from humans to rodents, and we summarized the findings and organized the relevant data. The included studies were recent reports that involved xenotransplantation using human islets in a rodent model. We excluded the studies that related to isotransplantation, autotransplantation and allotransplantation. A total of 34 studies that related to xenotransplantation were selected for review based on their relevance and current data. Advances in the use of different graft sites may overcome autoimmunity and rejection after transplantation, which may solve the problem of the scarcity of islet donors in patients with type 1 diabetes.