Homecare-based Motor Rehabilitation in Musculoskeletal Chronic Graft Versus Host Disease.

Chronic graft versus host disease (cGVHD) is a frequent complication of allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Extensive musculoskeletal and skin involvement may induce severe functional impairment, disability and quality of life deterioration. Physical rehabilitation is recommended as ancillary therapy in these forms, but experiences are sparse. A 39-year-old man affected by musculoskeletal and skin chronic graft versus host disease (cGVHD) was treated with a homecare-based motor rehabilitation program during palliation for disease progression. Significant functional improvement was obtained. Motor rehabilitation should be strongly considered for patients with musculoskeletal cGVHD, both in the palliative and in the curative phase of disease.

Long-term results and outcomes of crossover axilloaxillary bypass grafting: A 24-year experience.

OBJECTIVE: The outcome of crossover axilloaxillary bypass grafting in patients with stenosis or occlusion of the innominate or subclavian arteries was investigated. METHODS: The study was designed as a retrospective clinical study in a university hospital setting with 61 patients as the basis of the study. Fifty-eight patients (95.1%) had at least two risk factors or associated medical illnesses for atherosclerosis, and 35 patients (57.4%) had concomitant carotid artery stenosis that necessitated a staged procedure in 12 patients (19.7%). The patients underwent a total of 63 crossover axilloaxillary bypass grafting procedures. Demographics, risk factors and associated medical illnesses, preoperative symptoms and angiographic data, blood flow inversion in the vertebral artery, concomitant carotid artery disease, graft shape, caliber and material, and intraoperative and postoperative complications were studied to assess the specific influence in determining the outcome. RESULTS: One postoperative death (1.6%), four early graft thromboses (6.2%), and six minor complications (9. 8%) occurred. The overall mortality and morbidity rates were 1.6% and 16.1%, respectively. During the follow-up period (mean, 97.3 +/- 7.9 months), we observed five graft thromboses (8.3%). Primary and secondary patency rates at 5 and 10 years were 86.5% and 82.8% and 88.1% and 84.3%, respectively. Overall, two patients (3.3%) had recurrence of upper limb symptoms and none had recurrence of symptoms in the carotid or vertebrobasilar territory. The 5-year and 10-year symptom-free interval rates were 97.7% and 93.5%, respectively. Nine patients (15%) died of unrelated causes. The 5-year and 10-year survival rates were 93.2% and 67.3%, respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that no specific variables exerted an influence in the short-term and long-term results and the outcome. CONCLUSION: The optimal outcome of axilloaxillary bypass grafting supports its use as the most valuable surgical alternative to transthoracic anatomic reconstructions for innominate lesion, long stenosis of the subclavian artery, and short subclavian artery stenosis associated with ispilateral carotid artery lesions.

Demographic trends and teaching staff costs: the case of Italy.

PIP: "The State General Accounting Office [of Italy] has developed a model for projecting teaching staff. The model enables us to measure the effects of demographic scenarios and personnel policy alternatives, and can take future disequilibria explicitly into account in a calculation of permanent staff redundancies and substitute assignments. The central scenario of the national institute of statistics indicates a decline amounting to 271,000 teachers by 2045, but only a third of this will translate into effective savings in relation to GDP." (EXCERPT)^ieng

[Loco-regional fibrinolysis in the treatment of acute, non-traumatic ischemia of an artery. Use of PTFE, homologous vein, and Dacron in the treatment of acute thrombosis]. / La fibrinolisi loco-regionale nel trattamento dell'ischemia acuta non traumatica di un arto. Utilità nella trombosi acuta di bypass in PTFE, vena omologa e Dacron.

The acute thrombosis of a bypass graft can always be a common and challenging problem for the vascular surgeon, since surgical revascularization procedures can often result in failure, limb loss and infection. Since over the past 15 years literature reports emphasize the efficacy of intraarterial thrombolytic therapy (IATT) in achieving clot lysis and initial patency of thrombosed arteries and grafts, the purpose of this study is to verify if IATT with urokinase represents a valid alternative procedure to surgery. From our experience of 18 cases of lower limb ischemia, 9 of which graft thrombosis and 9 native artery occlusions, 3 cases of acute thrombosis of lower extremity bypass grafts, successfully treated with IATT are considered. After arteriography proof of lower extremity artery or bypass graft occlusion, thrombolytic therapy with urokinase was delivered at a rate of 100,000 UI/hour for 24/48 hours. At the conclusion of the thrombolytic treatment, percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) was performed on any residual stenosis of the bypass graft. In all three cases complete clot lysis within 48 hours was obtained, with patency of the bypass graft at two years follow-up. Urokinase in our experience, has always given good results. In many cases restoration of normal blood flow was obtained in bypass grafts thrombosed a three days. Urokinase has also been helpful in defining the causes of the occlusion (stenosis proximal or distal to the bypass) or of the anastomosis itself. Regional urokinase thrombolytic therapy, even if expensive, represents a primary tool for the vascular surgeon, since excellent results may be obtained, especially in cases where surgery is of high risk.

Dipyridamole echocardiography and 99mTc-MIBI spect dipyridamole scintigraphy for cardiac evaluation prior to peripheral vascular surgery.

Coronary artery disease accounts for most of the early and late mortality and morbidity associated with vascular surgery. Cardiac pre-operative evaluation is mandatory for the assessment of cardiac risk. The aim of this study is to compare dipyridamole scintigraphy with 99mTc-MIBI (MIBI-dipy) and dipyridamole echocardiography (ECHO-dipy) and to evaluate their capability in identifying cardiac risk for strong events such as death, unstable angina or myocardial infarction. METHODS. Sixty consecutive patients (mean age 67 +/- 7) were enrolled. 52 performed ECHO-dipy, 51 MIBI-dipy. 40 patients went to aorto-femoral or aorto-iliac graft replacement and 15 to vascular angioplasty. Five patients did not undergo surgery. RESULTS. Eighteen patients (30%) had stress defects and 9 patients also rest defects with MIBI-dipy. Six patients new asinergic areas at ECHO-dipy. Three pts died in the first year follow-up for a cerebrovascular event, a myocardial infarction and a sudden death respectively. Sensitivity and specificity, positive and negative predictive value were 100%, 69%, 16%, 100% for MIBI-dipy and 66%, 94%, 40%, 98% for ECHO-dipy. CONCLUSIONS. As other authors reported, stress scintigraphy is a pre-operative test showing high sensitivity but with no satisfying specificity. Stress echocardiography, in our population, can produce a good negative predictive value. It is a less expensive and widespread clinical tool useful in the evaluation of preoperative patients. Its positive predictive power is not satisfying but it is shared with all non-invasive pre-operative tests available now.

[Alternative therapy of deep venous thrombosis in patients at hemorrhagic risk]. / Terapia alternativa della trombosi venosa profonda nel paziente a rischio emorragico.

The authors report on the pharmacological employment of defibrotide in the treatment of a case of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) of the left iliac-femoral veins in a patient with a high-risk of hemorrhage (haematuria from kidney neoplasm, rupture of basilar artery aneurysm, urethral bleeding from catheter trauma). Alternatively to the traditional thrombolytic and anticoagulants, not indicated here for their haemorrhagic risk potential, defibrotide promptly resolved the DVT without any major effect on blood coagulation parameters. Initially, 1 gr of defibrotide in 250 ml of glucose-1-phosphate solution was administered twice-daily for the first two days when improvement had been observed. An additional 5 days of therapy was continued under the same regimen, then 400 mg intravenously every 2 hours for 14 days, and 400 mg intramuscularly every 24 hours until the 30th day. The patient was dismissed from the hospital on therapy with indobufen 200 mg orally, and elastic support stocking. After 6 months the patient is well. An echo color Doppler evaluation showed a normal venous blood flow through the femoral, iliac and caval veins, and venous blood reflux in the iliac-femoral and femoral saphenous veins due to valvular insufficiency. Caval filters, although recognized by many institutions as a preferred method of protection against pulmonary thromboembolism especially in patients with a contraindication to anticoagulation therapy or recurrent pulmonary embolism, was not used in this case, since the patient was critically ill. From this case report and the review of the literature it seems that defibrotide may represent a valid alternative therapy in the treatment of DVT, especially in high risk haemorrhagic patients.

Median time from seroconversion to AIDS in Italian HIV-positive haemophiliacs: different parametric estimates.

The purpose of this study was to estimate the median incubation time between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and onset of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), using three parametric models and six estimates of seroconversion time. Study subjects were 732 HIV-positive haemophiliacs enrolled in the Italian Registry of patients with congenital coagulation disorders. Seroconversion time was estimated for each subject according to six different criteria, based on three distributions of seroconversion (uniform, uniform on three sub-intervals and truncated Weibull) and two indices synthesizing each distribution (median and median of three random values). The estimated seroconversion times were subsequently used as starting points in the analysis of incubation. This was performed applying Kaplan-Meier non-parametric survival analysis, and fitting to incubation data three probability density functions, representing three different situations with respect to the hazard of developing AIDS following seroconversion (namely Weibull (WE), generalized exponential (GE) and log-logistic (LL)). The cumulative incidence over an 8-year period ranged from 14.9 to 17.8 per cent when applying the Kaplan-Meier method, from 14.1 to 17.2 per cent when using the WE function, from 14.5 to 17.3 per cent when using the GE function and from 14.4 to 17.3 per cent when using the LL function, depending on the estimate of seroconversion time used. Similarly, the median incubation times ranged from 12.6 to 15.0 years with the WE function, from 14.0 to 16.5 years with the GE function, and from 13.4 to 16.1 years with the LL function. The presence of a bound on the increase of the hazard function seems to affect the incubation more strongly than the eventual decrease following the attainment of the maximum risk. This may be due to the decrease in the hazard beginning when most of the seropositive subjects have already developed AIDS.

Acute renal failure occurring during intravenous desferrioxamine therapy: recovery after haemodialysis.

A patient with transfusion-dependent thalassemia was undergoing home intravenous desferrioxamine (DFX) treatment by means of a totally implanted system because of his poor compliance with the nightly subcutaneous therapy. Due to an accidental malfunctioning of the infusion pump, the patient was inadvertently administered a toxic dosage of the drug which caused renal insufficiency. Given the progressive deterioration of the symptoms and of the laboratory values, despite adequate medical treatment, a decision was made to introduce haemodialytical therapy in order to remove the drug and therapy reduce the nephrotoxicity. From the results obtained, haemodialysis can therefore be suggested as a useful therapy in rare cases of progressive acute renal failure caused by desferrioxamine.

Effects of different parametric estimates of seroconversion time on analysis of progression to AIDS among Italian HIV-positive haemophiliacs.

The purpose of this study was to estimate seroconversion time using different parametric methods and to assess their influence on the estimation of the incubation time between HIV infection and onset of AIDS. Study subjects were 712 HIV-positive haemophiliacs enrolled in the Italian National Registry of patients with congenital coagulation disorders. Seroconversion time was estimated using the mid-point of each seroconversion interval (MID), the median of each interval under an estimated uniform distribution with cutpoints at December 1981 and December 1985 (MUU), the median of each interval under an estimated Weibull distribution (MUW), and the median of three random values drawn from each interval under the Weibull distribution (RUW). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that the cumulative incidence of AIDS over a 7-year period was 11.6 per cent (SE 1.3 per cent) when using the MID estimate of seroconversion time, 10.8 per cent (1.2 per cent) with the MUU estimate, and 13.4 per cent (1.3 per cent) and 12.3 per cent (1.3 per cent) when using MUW and RUW estimates, respectively. This study demonstrates that the estimate of seroconversion time does not seem to be a major factor affecting estimates of AIDS incidence since the different techniques for estimating HIV seroconversion time yielded very similar results.

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) in peripheral ischemic pain.

Between 1982 and 1987, 45 patients suffering from painful symptomatology caused by peripheral vascular disease, not curable by medical or surgical therapy, were implanted with epidural neurological stimulators. Measurements used in evaluating the effectiveness of the method were pain control, walking distance, and development of trophic problems. With most patients, we noted a satisfactory and long-lasting degree of pain control. Walking distance increased to a surprising degree. Trophic lesions smaller than 3 sq cm healed, while lesions of greater size required amputation of the limb. Transcutaneous oxygen tension (TcpO2) was used to study the effects of SCS on peripheral circulation in implanted patients. In addition, TcpO2 was calculated in 15 patients before and during the percutaneous test to predict the effectiveness of SCS. Regression of painful symptomatology was achieved only in patients whose TcpO2 improved during the course of the testing. Therefore, this method provides an objective measure for the implantation of neurostimulator.

[Circadian rhythm of retinal critical fusion frequency (CFF)]. / Ritmo cricadiano della frequenza critica di fusione centrale retinica (CFF).

The measure of the fusion critical Frequency investigates the cerebral and retinal blood circulation. It has been carried out by means of Modugno-Rispoli apparatus in 11 subjects with a circadian procedure. A circadian rhythm was detected in right eye, left eye and both eyes with acrophases respectively at 11,57, 11.19 and 11.31 hrs. It is concluded that the existence of the oscillations of the cerebral vascular efficiency could have a practical implications in both diagnosis and therapy of related disease.