[Thanatological analysis of traumatic disease]. / K tanatologicheskomu analizu travmaticheskoi bolezni.

The transition of trauma disease to the premortal period represents a qualitative leap of changing pathogenesis into thanatogenesis. Practically it means the appearance of such a condition of the patient which requires urgent measures of treatment directed to the correction of life-threatening alterations of homeostasis. The determination of some pathological process in the clinical picture of trauma disease as a possible direct cause of death presupposes the following prognosis of the type of the terminal condition, mechanism of death with the resulting conclusions concerning organization of curative measures.

[Morphologic characteristics of the changes in the thymus and spleen in alcoholism]. / Morfologicheskaia kharakteristika izmenenii vilochkovoi zhelezy i selezenki pri alkogolizme.

Morphological studies of the thymus and the spleen were made in 54 alcohol addicts and 53 cases of other death cause at the age from 25 to 65 yr. Alcoholism was found to induce the reduction in thymus size and the number of its lobes with a simultaneous decrease of lymphocyte content in them; in the lymphatic follicles of the spleen (in the presence of infectious processes) absence of bright multiplication centres and alkaline phosphatase activity in their mantle zone cells was noted. There appeared to be a statistically significant difference in the amount of the parenchyma in the thymus of alcoholics (p less than 0.017) compared to that of the control group 0.68 +/- 0.09 g and 1.33 +/- 0.21 g, respectively and this figure was almost 4-fold less, than the average age norms, 0.26 +/- 0.03 g; the quantitative content of the splenic pulp in alcoholics also had a statistically significant difference compared to the control group (P less than 0.001), 6.37 +/- 0.66 g vs. 12.59 +/- 0.98 g, respectively. The data obtained indicate the development of immunodeficiency states in alcoholism and basing on the changes occurring in the thymus and spleen they can be referred to a combined T- and B-cell form of immunodeficiency.