Pancreatobiliary adenosquamous carcinoma (report of two cases)

Adenosquamous carcinomas are rare malignant tumors of the pancreas and periampullary region. We present two cases of pancreatic and periampullary adenosquamous carcinoma with clinicopathologic, histo- and immunohistochemical findings. A 51-year-old and a 48-year-old man presented with right upper quadrant pain of three months duration and jaundice for two weeks. Both cases had an elevation of liver enzymes and CA 19-9. In the first case, computerized tomography showed a 3 cm-mass at the pancreatic head. In the second one, endoscopic retrograde choledocopancreatography (ERCP) revealed a mass at the ampulla Vateri localization. A pancreatoduodenectomy was performed for both cases. Gross pathologic examination displayed a solid, gray-white colored 4 cm-tumor at the pancreatic head and a solid, pink-white colored, 2 cm-tumor at the periampullary region bulging into the duodenal lumen. Microscopically, both tumors were composed of solid nests of squamous cells with pearl formation and mucin-containing glandular cells and diagnoses were adenosquamous carcinoma. Furthermore, histo- and immunohistochemical findings were consistent with microscopic diagnoses.     

A solid-phase competition ELISA for measuring antibody to foot-and-mouth disease virus

A solid-phase competition ELISA has been developed to measure antibodies to foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus and has been validated using an extensive range of sera from cattle. The assay uses polyclonal antisera and inactivated purified 146S antigens of FMD virus and was compared with the liquid-phase blocking ELISA and the virus neutralisation test on a range of serum sets. When examining test sera at a 1:5 dilution with a cut-off point of 30% inhibition of reaction, the solid-phase competition ELISA was as sensitive as the liquid-phase blocking ELISA for sera from infected or vaccinated animals. The limit of detection of the solid-phase ELISA was similar to that of the liquid-phase assay and both tests had lower limit of detection (i.e. were able to detect lower amounts of antibody) than the virus neutralisation test. The specificity of the solid-phase ELISA was considerably higher than that of the liquid-phase blocking ELISA and almost equivalent to that of the virus neutralisation test. The assay thus retains the sensitivity of the liquid-phase blocking ELISA whilst being easier to use, more robust and specific, and therefore offers an improvement for FMD virus antibody detection.     

Measuring and understanding public awareness of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders in Alberta,Canada

Journal of Public Health - Efforts to increase public awareness about fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) sometimes fail to translate into direct changes in attitudes or behaviors regarding...     

The prognostic significance of total lymph node number in patients with axillary lymph node-negative breast cancer.

AIM: In node-negative breast cancer patients, several factors for survival have been evaluated and currently, some of them are accepted for their prognostic and/or predictive values after validation in the separate data sets. The prognostic significance of increases in the number of pathologically detectable axillary lymph nodes in the node-negative patients could not been established clearly. To address this question, we have reviewed our patients' records. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in pathologically node-negative patients who underwent modified radical mastectomy for stage I and II breast cancer. Survival and multivariate prognostic factor analyses were carried out to determine whether the number of tumour-free lymph nodes in complete axillary dissection material in addition to known factors was significant for the outcomes. RESULTS: Two hundred and seventy consecutive patients were eligible to enter the trial. The median observation time and the median number of tumour-free lymph nodes were 61 (from 30 to 120) months and 18 (from 10 to 44), respectively. The cohort was divided into the groups according to the number of nodes. The 5-year event-free and overall survivals were 92.5 and 98.3% for patients who had 18 lymph nodes or less, and 70 and 86.7% for those who had more than 18 negative nodes, respectively (P < 0.00001). Multivariate analysis for event-free survival demonstrated that the number of lymph nodes (Relative risk: 3.2 and 95% confidence interval: 1.7 to 5.9) in addition to the pathological tumour size and age was the most important independent prognosticator. In similar, multivariate analysis for overall survival showed that the number of lymph nodes together with the tumour size was the significant indicator (RR of cancer-specific dying in patients who had more than 18 nodes: 3.1 and 95% CI: 1.2 to 8.5). CONCLUSION: The increases in number of tumour-free lymph nodes are clinically important and this parameter should be taken into consideration in the breast cancer patients without metastatic lymph nodes.     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire Version B

Examining the fear of delivery after childbirth is important. The authors’ aim is to examine the overall psychometric quality of the Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire version B. Reliability and validity of the instrument were evaluated via reliability analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and multidimensional subscore estimation. A six-factor model was proposed to explain instrument results. Factors included concerns about labor pain, lack of positive behaviors, loneliness, lack of positive feelings, concerns about childbirth, and concerns about the baby. Researchers provide psychometric evidence about the quality of the questionnaire to measure fear of delivery after childbirth.     

Targeted vessel reconstruction in non‐contrast‐enhanced steady‐state free precession angiography

Image quality in non‐contrast‐enhanced (NCE) angiograms is often limited by scan time constraints. An effective solution is to undersample angiographic acquisitions and to recover vessel images with penalized reconstructions. However, conventional methods leverage penalty terms with uniform spatial weighting, which typically yield insufficient suppression of aliasing interference and suboptimal blood/background contrast. Here we propose a two‐stage strategy where a tractographic segmentation is employed to auto‐extract vasculature maps from undersampled data. These maps are then used to incur spatially adaptive sparsity penalties on vascular and background regions. In vivo steady‐state free precession angiograms were acquired in the hand, lower leg and foot. Compared with regular non‐adaptive compressed sensing (CS) reconstructions (CS_low), the proposed strategy improves blood/background contrast by 71.3 ± 28.9% in the hand (mean ± s.d. across acceleration factors 1–8), 30.6 ± 11.3% in the lower leg and 28.1 ± 7.0% in the foot (signed‐rank test, P < 0.05 at each acceleration). The proposed targeted reconstruction can relax trade‐offs between image contrast, resolution and scan efficiency without compromising vessel depiction. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.