Case Report: Should Regorafenib be prescribed as a continuous schedule in gastrointestinal stromal tumors? Three case reports on Regorafenib personalized schedule.

Introduction: Regorafenib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) approved in metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), colorectal cancer, and hepatocarcinoma. Anyway, the toxicity profile of Regorafenib standard schedule is associated with poor compliance and a high rate of discontinuation. For this reason, there is a growing need for a Regorafenib personalized schedule emerging from the scientific community. Objective: The aim of this case series was to describe the experience of our sarcoma referral center with the continuous administration of Regorafenib as an alternative regimen to treat metastatic GIST patients. Methods: We retrospectively collected clinical, pathological, and radiological data of patients with metastatic GIST treated with daily personalized Regorafenib at a single tertiary referral center from May 2021 to December 2022. Results: We identified three patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria. The average follow-up since the start of Regorafenib was 19.1 months (12-25 months). All three patients had started a standard third-line Regorafenib schedule according to guidelines. The reasons for switching to a continuous schedule were as follows: exacerbation of symptoms during week-off treatment in the first patient, a serious adverse event (AE) in the second patient, and a combination of both conditions in the third. After switching, none of the patients reported severe AEs, and they improved control of tumor-related symptoms. Two of the patients experienced disease progression after 16 months (9 months of which is continuous schedule) and 12 months (8.1 months of which is continuous schedule) of Regorafenib, respectively; the third patient is still receiving continuous Regorafenib at the time of writing, with a progression-free survival of 25 months (14 months after the modified schedule start). Conclusion: With a similar efficacy and lower toxicities, a daily, personalized Regorafenib schedule seems to be a promising alternative to the standard regimen for metastatic GIST patients, including the frail ones. Further prospective analyses are needed to confirm the safety and efficacy of such regimen.

Head-to-Head Comparison between High-Resolution Microultrasound Imaging and Multiparametric MRI in Detecting and Local Staging of Bladder Cancer: The BUS-MISS Protocol.

BACKGROUND: MRI has been proposed as a new staging tool for bladder cancer (BC), but use is limited by its high costs and low availability. 29-MHz high-resolution micro-ultrasound (mUS) technology has been suggested as an alternative to detect BC and distinguish between muscle-invasive and non-muscle invasive BC. OBJECTIVE: The aim was to compare the diagnostic accuracy of mUS vs. magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in differentiating NMIBC and MIBC at definitive pathological examination. METHODS: This is a prospective study of patients with a primary diagnosis of BC with either positive urine cytology (UC) or negative UC and a tumor size > 25 mm from a tertiary care high volume center. mUS, with the ExactVu system with an EV29L 29 MHz side-fire transducer, and a 3-Tesla MRI were performed before transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) in every patient before undergoing TURBT. We compared the imaging results with pathological reports. RESULTS: The analyzed population consisted of 58 individuals. The reported mUS and MRI sensitivity, specificity, positive, and negative predictive values were 85.0%, 76.3%, 65.4%, and 90.6%, versus 85.0%, 50.0%, 47.2%, and 86.4%, respectively. In accuracy analysis, the AUC for mUS and MRI were respectively 0.807 and 0.675. CONCLUSIONS: In our population mUS seems to have a better performance in distinguishing NMIBC from MIBC. The main limitation of mUS is the probe shape that makes its use problematic in cases with a large prostate and inadequate rectal preparation. Further studies with a larger population are ongoing to compare and validate these techniques in this setting.

Risk factors for myocardial injury and death in patients with COVID-19: insights from a cohort study with chest computed tomography.

AIMS: Whether pulmonary artery (PA) dimension and coronary artery calcium (CAC) score, as assessed by chest computed tomography (CT), are associated with myocardial injury in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is not known. The aim of this study was to explore the risk factors for myocardial injury and death and to investigate whether myocardial injury has an independent association with all-cause mortality in patients with COVID-19. METHODS AND RESULTS: This is a single-centre cohort study including consecutive patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 undergoing chest CT on admission. Myocardial injury was defined as high-sensitivity troponin I >20 ng/L on admission. A total of 332 patients with a median follow-up of 12 days were included. There were 68 (20.5%) deaths; 123 (37%) patients had myocardial injury. PA diameter was higher in patients with myocardial injury compared with patients without myocardial injury [29.0 (25th-75th percentile, 27-32) mm vs. 27.7 (25-30) mm, P < 0.001). PA diameter was independently associated with an increased risk of myocardial injury [adjusted odds ratio 1.10, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02-1.19, P = 0.01] and death [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) 1.09, 95% CI 1.02-1.17, P = 0.01]. Compared with patients without myocardial injury, patients with myocardial injury had a lower prevalence of a CAC score of zero (25% vs. 55%, P < 0.001); however, the CAC score did not emerge as a predictor of myocardial injury by multivariable logistic regression. Myocardial injury was independently associated with an increased risk of death by multivariable Cox regression (adjusted HR 2.25, 95% CI 1.27-3.96, P = 0.005). Older age, lower estimated glomerular filtration rate, and lower PaO2/FiO2 ratio on admission were other independent predictors for both myocardial injury and death. CONCLUSIONS: An increased PA diameter, as assessed by chest CT, is an independent risk factor for myocardial injury and mortality in patients with COVID-19. Myocardial injury is independently associated with an approximately two-fold increased risk of death.

Vanishing pineal mass in a young patient without therapy: Case report and review of the literature.

Spontaneous regression is defined as the decrease in size or disappearance of a primary tumour or metastatic disease without therapeutic intervention. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain was performed in a 14-year-old girl experiencing sudden-onset headaches. First diagnostic exams revealed a mass in the pineal region that disappeared at three-month MRI control. Three-year follow-up MRI studies were performed. No therapy was administered, but the pineal lesion had disappeared at three-year follow-up.

Image guided interventions in spinal infections.

Spinal infections are challenging to diagnose and represent a life-threatening medical condition. Diagnosis is often delayed because of nonspecific accompanying symptoms. The role of interventional neuroradiology in spinal infection is double: diagnostic and therapeutic, consisting substantially of 2 main procedures, represented by spine biopsies and positioning of percutaneous drainage, which represent a minimally invasive, faster and more cost-effective alternative to open surgery procedures. This article will focus on the available state-of-the-art techniques to perform discovertebral image-guided biopsies in case of suspected infections and on image-guided placement of percutaneous drainage to treat infectious collections of the spine and paravertebral structures.

Spine epidural and sacroiliac joints injections--when and how to perform.

OBJECTIVES: To review the state-of-the-art of image-guided techniques used to treat painful syndromes of the lower back, their indications, how they should be performed, their related risks and the expected results. METHODS: We describe the actual standards about image-guided infiltrative therapies both on spine and on sacroiliac joints. RESULTS: Both spinal epidural and sacroiliac injections appear useful in a large percentage of treated patients to get control of the perceived pain. Performing these therapies under CT or fluoroscopic guidance is the best and safest way to obtain satisfactory results because it is possible to target the use of drugs directly to the involved painful structures. CONCLUSIONS: Image-guided injections of the epidural space and of the sacroiliac joints are effective techniques for the treatment of pain; their effectiveness is sometimes not lasting for long periods of time but considering the low associated risk when performed by trained personnel, they can be easily repeated.

320-Row Detector Dynamic 4D-CTA for the Assessment of Brain and Spinal Cord Vascular Shunting Malformations. A Technical Note.

Shunting vascular malformations of the brain and spinal cord are traditionally studied using digital subtraction angiography (DSA), the current gold standard imaging method routinely used because of its favourable combination in terms of spatial and temporal resolution. Because DSA is relatively expensive, time-consuming and carries a risk of silent embolic events and a small risk of transient or permanent neurologic deterioration, a non-invasive alternative angiographic method is of interest. New 320 row-detector CT scanners allow volumetric imaging of the whole brain with temporal resolution up to ≌ 3 Hz. Those characteristics make computed tomography angiography (CTA) an affordable imaging method to study the haemodynamics of the whole brain and can also be applied to the study of limited portions of the spinal cord. The aim of this paper is to make a brief summary of our experience in studying shunting vascular malformation of the brain and spinal cord using dynamic 4D-CTA, explaining the technical details of the studies performed at our institution, and the state-of-the-art major advantages and drawbacks of this new technique. We found that dynamic 4D-CTA is able to depict the main architectural characteristics of previously untreated vascular shunting malformations both in brain and spinal cord (i.e. their main arterial feeders and draining veins) allowing their correct diagnosis and exhaustive classification, limiting the use of DSA for therapeutic purposes.