[Urinary tract infections: review of the case records of the 5-year-old population of Novara]. / Le infezioni delle vie urinarie. Revisione della casistica della popolazione novarese di cinque anni.

AIM: A feverish high temperature is the symptom that most frequently leads families to take their children to a Pediatric First Aid unit. In the differential diagnosis of the causes of hyperpyrexia the presence of infections of the genito-urinary tract have to be excluded. Infections of the urinary ways are often the cause of high temperatures in infancy, particularly during the 1st year of life; early identification at the moment of examination at the Paediatric First Aid clinic of patients with infections of the urinary ways makes it possible to prevent the onset of renal complications. We carried out a retrospective study with the purpose of evaluating the incidence of infections of the urinary ways and their complications in paediatric patients who had come to the First Aid unit for hyperpirexia and were later hospitalised after examination of the urine revealed and infection of the urinary ways. METHODS: The study was carried out by consulting the registers listing arrivals at the First Aid unit and the subsequent discharge diagnosis. We then consulted the clinical records of patients who required admission to our Paediatrics Clinic arter the first aid examination. RESULTS: Re-reading the registers of examination carried out and the clinica records of hospitalised patients there emerged an increase in the observation of this pathology, diagnosed at the moment of the First Aid examination by means of rapid tests and thereafter assessed by haematochemical and radiological tests. CONCLUSIONS: In our opinion this increase could be attributed to the greater attention paid to diagnosing the causes of fever of apparently unknown origin.

Acute complicated sphenoiditis in childhood. Case report and literature review.

In ENT practice, acute uncomplicated sphenoiditis is rarely diagnosed: very often diagnosis is involved for multiform and unspecific symptomatology, such as to sham nervous, visual and upper respiratory tract diseases. Only a careful differential diagnostics and an instrumental investigation consents to realise quickly a specific treatment, avoiding some complications, still frequent. This case-report, underlines that the polyspecialists' co-operation is necessary to make a correct diagnosis, and to avert important and dangerous complications into shapes of sphenoiditis.

Ozone and water-vapor measurements by Raman lidar in the planetary boundary layer: error sources and field measurements.

A new lidar instrument has been developed to measure tropospheric ozone and water vapor at low altitude. The lidar uses Raman scattering of an UV beam from atmospheric nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor to retrieve ozone and water-vapor vertical profiles. By numerical simulation we investigate the sensitivity of the method to both atmospheric and device perturbations. The aerosol optical effect in the planetary boundary layer, ozone interference in water-vapor retrieval, statistical error, optical cross talk between Raman-shifted channels, and optical cross talk between an elastically backscattered signal in Raman-shifted signals and an afterpulse effect are studied in detail. In support of the main conclusions of this model study, time series of ozone and water vapor obtained at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and during a field campaign in Crete are presented. They are compared with point monitor and balloon sounding measurements for daytime and nighttime conditions.

Airborne Lidar LEANDRE II for Water-Vapor Profiling in the Troposphere. I. System description.

The airborne differential absorption lidar LEANDRE II, developed for profiling tropospheric water-vapor mixing ratios, is described. The emitter is a flash-lamp-pumped alexandrite laser, which operates in a double-pulse, dual-wavelength mode in the 727-736 nm spectral domain. Two 50-mJ successive on-line and off-line pulses with an output linewidth of 2.4 x 10(-2) cm(-1) and a spectral purity larger than 99.99% are emitted at a 50-mus time interval. The spectral positioning is controlled in real time by a wavemeter with an absolute accuracy of 5 x 10(-3) cm(-1). The receiver is a 30-cm aperture telescope with a 3.5-mrad field of view and a 1-nm filter bandwidth. These instrument characteristics are defined for measuring the water-vapor mixing ratio with an accuracy better than 0.5 g kg(-1) in the first 5 km of the atmosphere with a range resolution of 300 m, integration on 100 shots, and an instrumental systematic error of less than 2%. The sensitivity study and first results are presented in part II [Appl. Opt. 40, 3462-3475 (2001)].

Airborne Lidar LEANDRE II for Water-Vapor Profiling in the Troposphere. II. First results.

The airborne lidar LEANDRE II, described in part I [Appl. Opt. 40, 3450-3461 (2001)], has been flown on the French Atmospheric Research Aircraft to perform lower-troposphere (0-3.5-km) measurements of the water-vapor mixing ratio. We present and discuss the method used for retrieval of the water-vapor mixing ratio and analyze systematic and random measurement errors in relation to instrument design and performance. The results of a series of test flights are presented. With a 0.8-km horizontal resolution and a 300-m vertical resolution, the standard deviation of the measurement error ranges from approximately 0.05 g kg(-1) at 3.5 km to 0.3-0.4 g kg(-1) near the ground, in agreement with the predicted random error. Comparisons with dew-point hygrometer measurements show a vertically averaged difference of ?0.15 g kg(-1), approximately equal to the observed water-vapor variability.

Influence of the photomultiplier tube spatial uniformity on lidar signals.

Measurements of the spatial uniformity of Hamamatsu H5783-06 photosensor modules were performed by the flying spot method. The results were used to simulate the influence of the photomultiplier tube on a lidar signal. A simple method for improving the spatial uniformity is proposed.

Injection-seeded pulsed alexandrite laser for differential absorption lidar application.

We describe a Q-switched alexandrite laser injection seeded with a cw single-mode titanium-sapphire laser. The reported experimental results show that this system meets the frequency stabilization required for differential absorption lidar measurement of humidity, pressure, and temperature. The emission of the cw titanium-sapphire master oscillator is locked to an atmospheric absorption line by means of a servoloop with derivative spectroscopy. The spectral position is stabilized within ±3.5 × 10(-4) cm(-1) (10 MHz) of the peak of the line over 1 hr. The alexandrite laser emits pulses of 30 mJ in 500 ns, with a spectral linewidth of ≈ 3.3 × 10(-3) cm(-1) (100 MHz). The position of the centroid of the emitted spectrum has a standard deviation of 6 × 10(-4) cm(-1) (18 MHz) and is held within ±1.3 × 10(-3) cm(-1) (40 MHz) of the peak of the absorption line over 1 h.

[Thyroid function in children with Down's syndrome]. / La funzionalità tiroidea in bambini affetti da sindrome di Down.

The aim of the present study was to evaluate thyroid function in 45 Down's syndrome patients in order to verify the hypothesis of an increased risk of thyroid disorders associated with trisomy 21. A patient with subclinical hypothyroidism (TSH 16.6 microU/ml; T4 6.4 micrograms/dl) was diagnosed in a group of 28 subjects with Down's syndrome studied at a mean age of 6 years and 5 months using T3, T4, FT3, FT4, TSH assays and clinical examination. T4 and TSH values were also measured in 10 of these children at the neonatal screening. One infant presented transient neonatal hyperthyrotropinemia but later became euthyroid. The analysis of thyroid hormone values at the neonatal screening of other 17 subjects with Down's syndrome did not reveal other cases with thyroid function disorders. The results of this study highlight that altered thyroid functions are evident in children with trisomy 21 associated with heart anomalies. A careful clinico-endocrinological follow-up of patients with Down's syndrome is recommended in order to ensure an early diagnosis of thyroid function disorders and/or autoimmune diseases which might complicate the evolution of trisomy and negatively affect outcome.

[Protective effect of cortisone against the anti-cellular action of endotoxins]. / Sull'effetto protettore dei cortisonici nei riguardi della azione anticellulare delle endotossine. Ricerche in vitro mediante il microscopio a contrasto di fase.

In vitro studies with the phase contrast microscope. The protective effect of sodium 6-methyl-prednisolone hemisuccinate against the effects of a purified Salmonella abortus equi lipopolysaccharide were investigated in the rabbit. The intravenous injection of 8 mg of the cortisone derivative simultaneously with the injection of the endotoxin considerably attenuated the febbrile and leukopenic action of the latter. The rate of locomotion of the leukocytes in the peripheral blood in animals treated with endotoxin or with endotoxin plus cortisone was also investigated. In animals protected by sodium 6-methyl-prednisolone hemisuccinate the endotoxin caused a smaller decrease of speed of migration of the leukocytes than that observed in animals treated with the lipopolysaccharide alone. These findings are discussed in the light of present knowledge of the mechanism of the anti-cellular action of endotoxins and of the protective action of cortisone.