Cardiac Surgery in Patients With Liver Cirrhosis (CASTER) Study: Early and Long-Term Outcomes

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Management of respiratory complications and rehabilitation in individuals with muscular dystrophies: 1st Consensus Conference report from UILDM - Italian Muscular Dystrophy Association (Milan,January 25-26, 2019)

Respiratory complications are common in the patient with muscular dystrophy. The periodic clinical and instrumental respiratory evaluation is extremely important. Despite the presence in the literature of updated guidelines, patient associations often report lack of knowledge of these pathologies, particularly in peripheral hospitals. The purpose of this work, inspired by the Italian Muscular Dystrophy Association (UILDM) is to improve management of respiratory problems necessary for the management of these patients complex. To this end, the main items that the specialist can meet in the follow-up of these pathologies have been analyzed and discussed, among which the respiratory basal evaluation, the criteria of adaptation to non-invasive ventilation, management of bronchial secretions, situations of respiratory emergency, indications for tracheostomy and the subject of advance directives of treatment (DAT).Key words: respiratory failure, muscular dystrophy, cough efficacy, spirometry, polygraphy, non-invasive ventilation, arterial blood gases, cough machine, invasive ventilation, tracheostomy, mechanical ventilation     

Climate change and cancer: converging policies

Intervening on risk factors for noncommunicable diseases (including cancer) in industrialized countries could achieve a reduction of between 30% and 40% of premature deaths. In the meantime, the need to intervene against the threat of climate change has become obvious. CO₂ emissions must be reduced by 45% by the year 2030 and to zero by 2050 according to recent agreements. We propose an approach in which interventions are designed to prevent diseases and jointly mitigate climate change, the so‐called cobenefits. The present article describes some examples of how climate change mitigation and cancer prevention could go hand in hand: tobacco control, food production, and transportation (air pollution). Many others can be identified. The advantage of the proposed approach is that both long‐term (climate) and short‐term (health) benefits can be accrued with appropriate intersectoral policies.

Abbreviations

GHG

greenhouse gases

IARC

International Agency for Research on Cancer

LMICs

low‐ and middle‐income countries

NCD

noncommunicable disease

PMI

Philip Morris International

SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals

UPF

ultraprocessed food

     

Two SARS-CoV-2 IgG immunoassays comparison and time-course profile of antibodies response

Introduction: The persistence of circulating antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 infection is not yet well known. We compare the results of 2 automated systems for the determination of IgG against SARS CoV-2 and assess the time-course of the IgG response. Methods: IgG were measured in 103 specimens of 55 patients with COVID-19 (time from the symptoms’ onset: 3–187 days) using the automated tests "Abbott SARS-COV-2 IgG" and "MAGLUMI 2019-nCoV IgG". Results: The 2 methods had a concordance of 90.3%, but the quantitative correlation, although significant, showed dispersed results. All the specimens resulted positive after 17 days. However, the median concentrations of IgG rapidly increased up to 20 days and decreased for Maglumi IgG while Abbott IgG showed a constant trend up to 85 days, and then slowly declined. Conclusions: The titer of IgG against SARS-CoV-2 may significantly and rapidly decrease, but with a very different time-course depending on the method used for the determination.     

Dual photoacoustic/ultrasound multi-parametric imaging from passion fruit-like nano-architectures

Ultrasound (US) imaging is a well-established diagnostic technique to image soft tissues in real time, while photoacoustic (PA) is an emerging imaging technique employed to collect molecular information. Integration of PA and US imaging provides complementary information enhancing diagnostic accuracy without employing ionizing radiations. The development of contrast agents able to combine PA and US features is pivotal to improve the significance of PAUS imaging and for PAUS-guided treatment of neoplasms. Here, we demonstrate in relevant ex-vivo models that disassembling passion fruit-like nano-architectures (pfNAs) can be employed in PAUS imaging. pfNAs are composed by silica nanocapsules comprising aggregates of commercial NIR-dyes-modified polymers and ultrasmall gold nanoparticles. The intrinsic US and PA features of pfNAs have been fully characterized and validated in tissue-mimicking materials and in ex vivo preparations. Moreover, the application of a multi-parametric approach has allowed the increase of information extrapolated from collected images for a fine texture analysis.