[Liposarcoma of the leg]. / Liposarcoma dell'arto inferiore.

The Authors report an interesting case of liposarcoma of the leg and review the international Literature. Moreover, a particular analysis of different aspects such as anatomy, clinic, diagnosis and treatment has been carried out.

[School difficulties in adolescence]. / L'adolescente con difficoltà scolastiche.

Loss, failure and desertion are those words, which better describe the most frequent difficulties incurred by teenagers, and their relation to the school environment, and indicate, as well, the lack of connection between individual aspirations and school achievements obtained. Despite the likelihood of school difficulties throughout the entire educational career, from the kindergarten to the college, we are able to recognize certain specific "disturbances" which come out during the adolescence, basically relating to the school experiences. School failure, school desertion and school abandonment are, in fact, issues mainly discussed in coincidence with the beginning of the adolescent age and the attending of the high school. The aetiopathogenesis of school discomfort is mostly determined by more than only one factor: psychological, physical, cognitive and environmental aspects, all together, contribute in various ways, to the rise and persisting of the above described problems. Suggesting a univocal characterization of the adolescent with school difficulties, is indeed a hard task, since school failure is not an exclusive feature of only one kind of personality or the expression of only one type of conflict. Once identified the individuals more subject to risk, and the warning signs of actual uneasiness, it is important therefore to intervene timely and in different ways in order to avoid the worsening or the excessive extension of the school difficulties and of their frequent and serious consequences on the teenagers' individual and domestic well-being. Such type of prevention definitely belongs to the Adolescent Medicine, and must be developed on different levels, by involving not only the teenagers, but also their families, the school, and the whole social environment in which the teenagers live and with which they interact.

[Legal and medico-legal issues in adolescent medicine. A critical review of the present regulation and legislation]. / Aspetti giuridici e medico-legali della pratica adolescentologica. Riflessioni sulla normativa e legislazione vigenti.

During the last years the Italian Government has taken many different initiatives to protect the adolescents rights to benefit from physical, psychical and social well-being. In particular, various projects concerning the promotion and the support of the school, the family, sport, mass-media, judicial and medical infrastructures, have been organised, promoted and financed. However, it is not always possible to assure a real safeguarding of teenagers rights; this especially happens because the problem concerning the autonomous capacity of minors to consent (or non consent) to the medical treatment is much debated. However, many contradictions still persist about the effective duration of the pediatric age. All the same, it must be noted that the Legislator apparently realised that not only the physical, psychological and social maturity proceed by steps, but also the legal capacity.

[Height percentiles of children at 6 to 11 years of age in the area of Lazio]. / I percentili della statura di bambini laziali da 6 a 11 anni.

BACKGROUND: In this paper we present growth height standards obtained by an auxological study on a primary school population of central Italy (Lazio), in the 1991-1992 and 1992-1993 school-years. METHODS: 4,175 children were included in the study: 2,024 females and 2,151 males, aged from 6 to 11 years. The sampling rate corresponds to more than 98% of the total primary school-population of the areas mentioned. The statistical analysis of the collected data was carried out by the Dipartment of Statistics of the University of Rome, using the widely available statistics packages STAT-GRAPHICS and SAS. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The analysis of height mean and standard deviation showed an increasing trend of height related to age, without significant differences by sex. The mean heights for females and males were practically the same in each age class. Height variance increases with age, too. This fact necessitates the use of the weighted regression technique to evaluate the functions that express the height growth trend. The relationship between height and age is linearlike and almost coincides for the two sexes. The height percentiles were calculated and the relative curves were developed, based on the distribution of normalized residuals. The centile curves confirm that there are no significant differences in the growth trends for both sexes and therefore the lines are overlapping. Substantial differences exist only in the end centiles (3th and 97th) and age extremes (6 and 11 years), possibly because of the small number of subjects.