Newly Diagnosed Crohn's Disease in Patient with Familial Mediterranean Fever.

Chronic abdominal pain sometimes constitute a major challenge, specially when a patient has two diseases with dominant features of abdominal pain in both. At this point, clinicians face a daunting task both in diagnosing and treating an individual's chronic abdominal pain. Similarly, familial Mediterranean fever disease and Crohn's disease have the same clinical features in terms of chronic abdominal pain, and inflammatory properties of these diseases. The association of familial Mediterranean fever disease and Crohn's disease is very rare and may lead to a remarkable challenge in both diagnosis and treatment. Here, we report a young man with FMF disease presented with extraordinary and intolerable abdominal pain relieved only by excessive narcotic analgesics. The presented case was diagnosed with CD and successfully treated with anti-TNF (tumor necrosis factor) due to steroid refractory.

Chemotherapy in elderly patients with metastatic gastric cancer; a single Turkish cancer center experience.

AIM: To analyze the results of chemotherapy applied at the Bülent Ecevit University School of Medicine, Department of Medical Oncology, to elderly patients with metastatic gastric cancer (GC). METHODS: The study retrospectively investigated hospital records including pathological reports, imaging records, chemotherapy regimens, response and toxicity profile. All patients received systemic chemotherapy for pathologically proven metastatic GC at the Bülent Ecevit University School of Medicine, Department of Medical Oncology. RESULTS: From 2005 to 2012, 23 metastatic GC patients older than 70 years were treated with systemic chemotherapy as a first-line therapy. As the first-line chemotherapy, 17 (74%) patients received polychemotherapy and the remaining six (26%) patients received monotherapy. Overall, 113 cycles were administered. The median progression free survival (PFS) for the first-line chemotherapy was 6 months (95% CI, 0-16) and the median overall survival (OS) was 14 months (95% CI, 3-30). Multivariate analysis revealed that decreased OS was significantly associated with poor Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status (p=0.045), elevated carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels at the diagnosis time (p = 0.040) and decreased number of chemotherapy cycles (p=0.019) with R-Sq (adj) = 41, 6%. One patient had a complete response with docetaxel, cisplatin and fluorouracil combined (DCF) regimen and had 12 months of disease free survival (DFS). CONCLUSION: This is the first study investigating the outcomes of chemotherapy in Turkish elderly metastatic GC patients. Docetaxel, cisplatin and fluorouracil combination were the most common regimen, which is a tolerable and effective choice in elderly patients who had good performance status.