First results of a mammographic screening program in two municipalities of Massa-Carrara Province (Italy).

AIMS AND BACKGROUND: A mammographic screening for breast cancer was started in 1989 in two municipalities of Massa-Carrara province. This paper describes the results of the first two years and evaluates the quality of the program via early indicators. METHODS: We calculated the attendance rate at first screening, the proportion of women recalled for further examinations (recall rate), the ratio between benign lesions and carcinomas detected by screening, the staging of the screen detected cancers and the ratio between detection rate and expected incidence (P/I ratio). RESULTS: Out of 14826 invited women 10407 (70.2%) attended the first screening; 266 (2.6%) of them were referred for further investigations but only 63 (0.6%) required surgical biopsy. A histological confirmed malignancy was found in 39 women corresponding to a detection rate of 3.7/1000. According to pTNM classification 89.1% of all cancers were either Tis or in stage T1; and in two third of the cases there was no nodes involvement. CONCLUSION: The results achieved so far, evaluated via early indicators, show a good start of the program.

Deficient natural killer cell activity in alcoholic cirrhosis.

Natural killer (NK) cell activity against two types of target cells was found to be low in patients with inactive alcoholic cirrhosis (AC). This defect was significantly more pronounced in AC patients with severe malnutrition than in those with mild or moderate malnutrition. This was not due to modifications of the kinetics of NK activity. The sera from AC patients had no inhibitory effect on the NK activity of normal subjects. Lymphocytes and macrophages from AC patients did not exert major suppressive effect on the NK activity of normal subjects. Interferon boosted the NK activity of cells from AC patients, but to a lesser degree than cells from normal controls. The findings show that a deficit of NK activity is clearly associated with inactive AC. This seems to be another consequence of AC on cellular immunity, and might be related to the protein calorie malnutrition often present in AC.