Implementing EBUS TBNA: first experience and review of literature.

Lung cancer has a very dismal prognosis and careful diagnosis and staging is of outmost importance. EBUS has become a cornerstone investigation for diagnosis and staging and current guidelines stress that there is a steep learning curve when introducing this tech- nique in practice (only 30 procedures are considered necessary). Over a period of 10 months a total of 21 patients have been addressed to our unit for an EBUS TBNA procedure. Only three were referred for staging purposes (for lung, digestive and cervix cancers) the others being primary diagnostic approaches where simpler procedures had previously failed. Procedures were initially performed under local anesthesia (3 cases) then under general anesthesia and jet ventilation using a laryngeal mask approach. Mediastinal lymph node group 7 was the most frequent target (9 cases) followed by group 4R (8 cases) and peribronchial tumoral processes (7 cases); one case did not required any needle-aspiration. On average each examination resulted in the sampling of 1.4 targets. There were no significant procedure related severe adverse events. Although 21 G cytology needles were used, adequate histological samples were obtained for 11 cases and cytology was the examination of choice for 9 cases. The pathology/cytology results were retrospectively assessed as satisfactory for 15 cases (confirmed neoplastic or other disease) and inconclusive for 5 cases. Non neoplastic disorders were represented by sarcoidosis, tuberculosis and bronchogenic cyst (3 cases). The procedure can be considered fast and safe; trained pathology personnel play an extremely important role: presently referrals are rare for staging purposes.

EGFR MUTATIONS IN NON-SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER: LOCAL EPIDEMIOLOGY AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE.

INTRODUCTION: Lung cancer's dismal prognosis led to new therapeutic approaches among which TKIs being among most promising; MATERIAL AND METHOD: Retrospective study at the Regional Institute of Oncology Iasi of non small cell lung cancer patients which underwent molecular investigations between November 2013 - September 2014. EGFR mutation status (positive, negative, undetermined) was assessed with an Entrogen EGFR kit using DNA extracted from paraffin embedded samples (surgical or endobronchial biopsies) with the Macherey-Nagel "NucleoSpin FFPE DNAkit" and then amplified on a Applied Biosystem 7500 Real Time PCR System. RESULTS: There were 63 adenocarcinoma samples (17 females, mean age 60,9 +/- 9 years): 49 primary lung tumors and 14 secondary lesions (brain, lymph nodes, pleural). There was insufficient bioptic material for three cases. TTF1 status was determined for 46 patients--six were negative. There were twelve mutations identified (7 female subjects, 5 male)--six L858R, five Del 19 and one G719X; ten were TTF1 positive for the remaining two TTF1 status was unknown. Female sex predominance was statistically significant (p = 0.02, chi squared). Mean age for mutation positive patients was 64 +/- 10 years; there were three never smokers, three active smokers and no data on smoking status was available for six subjects. CONCLUSION: Although small dimension of the study group precludes statistical significance EGFR mutations seem to correlate with TTF1 status.

Obstructive sleep apnea patients voice analysis.

UNLABELLED: It is generally considered that obstructive sleep apnea may associate larynx abnormalities--either anatomic or functional in nature; considering the vocal tract as a series of uniform loss cylindrical pipes the idea of non-invasively exploring this by means of spectral analysis emerged. The aim of our study is to evaluate potential changes in acoustic features of voice in sleep apnea patients as compared to matched controls in order to develop a potential screening test. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Sleep apnea subjects and controls were asked to produce sustained vowels such as "a" and "i" which were recorded and analyzed. Some parameters were estimated--average of fundamental frequency, peak amplitude variation and compared and others are still to be developed.