Laboratory interpretative comments and guidance: clinical and operative outcomes on moderate to severe hyponatraemia patient management.

AIMS: Hyponatraemia is the most common body fluid disorders but often goes unnoticed. Our laboratory incorporated a standardised procedure to help clinicians detect moderate/severe hyponatraemia. The study aims were to evaluate the outcomes on patient care and clinicians' satisfaction. METHODS: The study, observational and retrospective, included 1839 cases, adult and paediatric patients, with sodium concentration <130 mmol/L. The procedure consisted of interpretative comments in the emergency and core laboratories report and the point-of-care testing blood gas network report. We evaluated hyponatraemia length in two equal periods: before and after the implementation. We conducted a survey addressed to the staff of the clinical settings involved to know their satisfaction. RESULTS: The median hyponatraemia length decreased significantly from 4.95 hours (2.08-16.57) in the first period to 2.17 hours (1.06-5.39) in the second period. The lack of hyponatraemia patients follow-up was significantly less after the procedure implementation. The survey was answered by 92 (60 senior specialists and 32 residents) out of 110 clinicians surveyed. Ninety of them (98%) answered positively. CONCLUSIONS: We have demonstrated the reduction in the time for diagnosing and management by physicians, the higher uniformity in the time required to solve hyponatraemia episodes following our laboratory procedure and the clinicians' satisfaction.

Diagnosis of a cystic pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor: is cystic fluid chromogranin A useful?

Cystic pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (cP-NET) are a diagnostic challenge for clinic, since sometimes nor imaging features, cytology, or the study of biological markers in pancreatic cyst fluid (PCF), are able to provide the nature of the lesion, and therefore the definitive diagnostic is often made in the surgical piece. Is not infrequent that the lesions are wrongly defined as benign, in special when the cytology is negative for malignancy and the PCL is not mucinous and has a high glucose and a low CEA. We could incorporate new markers to improve the diagnostic performance of PCF samples, like chromogranin A, as in our case may be the only specific finding to detect a cP-TNE.

The Relationship between Angiogenic Factors and Energy Metabolism in Preeclampsia.

Antiangiogenic factors are currently used for the prediction of preeclampsia. The present study aimed to evaluate the relationship between antiangiogenic factors and lipid and carbohydrate metabolism in maternal plasma and placenta. We analyzed 56 pregnant women, 30 healthy and 26 with preeclampsia (including early and late onset). We compared antiangiogenic factors soluble Fms-like Tyrosine Kinase-1 (sfLt-1), placental growth factor (PlGF), and soluble endoglin (sEng)), lipid and carbohydrate metabolism in maternal plasma, and lipid metabolism in the placenta from assays of fatty acid oxidation, fatty acid esterification, and triglyceride levels in all groups. Antiangiogenic factors sFlt-1, sFlt-1/PlGF ratio, and sEng showed a positive correlation with triglyceride, free fatty acid, and C-peptide maternal serum levels. However, there was no relationship between angiogenic factors and placental lipid metabolism parameters. Free fatty acids were predictive of elevated sFlt-1 and sEng, while C-peptide was predictive of an elevated sFlt1/PlGF ratio. The findings in this study generate a model to predict elevated antiangiogenic factor values and the relationship between them with different products of lipid and carbohydrate metabolism in maternal serum and placenta in preeclampsia.

Prenatal prediction of very late onset small-for-gestational age newborns in low-risk pregnancies.

OBJECTIVE: To find a multivariate model for predicting small-for-gestational age newborns at 36 weeks' gestation by using clinical, biochemical and ultrasound measurements. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We evaluated 564 low-risk pregnant women and recorded maternal age, maternal body mass index, maternal mean blood pressure, soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (multiples of the median), placental growth factor (multiples of the median), soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1/placental growth factor ratio, estimated fetal weight centile and mean uterine artery pulsatility index at 36 weeks. Binary logistic regression was used. Statistical significance was set at 95% level (p < 0.05). RESULTS: We found three multivariate models showing relatively small differences in predictive capability. Model 1 only included estimated fetal weight centiles (area under the curve [AUC] 0.86; R2 = 0.42; p < 0.0001), Model 2 estimated fetal weight centiles and placental growth factor (multiples of the median) (AUC 0.87; R2 = 0.44; p < 0.0001) and Model 3 estimated fetal weight centiles, placental growth factor (multiples of the median) and mean uterine artery pulsatility index (AUC 0.88; R2 = 0.45; p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: Small-for-gestational age at delivery may be predicted by using a multivariate formula. The inclusion of parameters other than estimated fetal weight centile at 36 weeks' gestation modestly improves the predictive capability of the model. Clinical decisions should consider whether or not these slight differences deserve a change in current strategies.