The effects of robotic assistance on upper limb spatial muscle synergies in healthy people during planar upper-limb training.

Background: Robotic rehabilitation is a commonly adopted technique used to restore motor functionality of neurological patients. However, despite promising results were achieved, the effects of human-robot interaction on human motor control and the recovery mechanisms induced with robot assistance can be further investigated even on healthy subjects before translating to clinical practice. In this study, we adopt a standard paradigm for upper-limb rehabilitation (a planar device with assistive control) with linear and challenging curvilinear trajectories to investigate the effect of the assistance in human-robot interaction in healthy people.

[Multidetector CT urography: diagnostic role in the evaluation of patients with non-traumatic hematuria].

Blood in the urine (hematuria) can originate from any site along the urinary tract and may be the only sign of renal or vesical malignancy. Therefore, literature recommends for the evaluation of any case of macroscopic or microscopic hematuria. Our aim was to define the diagnostic role of multidetector CT urography (MDCTu) in the evaluation of this symptom through the analysis of 181 consecutive patients from January 2003 to March 2006.

Papillary carcinoma of the thyroid: low expression of NCAM (CD56) is associated with downregulation of VEGF-D production by tumour cells.

The expression of NCAM was investigated in tissue sections of 61 cases of papillary carcinoma and in 14 lymph node metastases using immunohistochemistry. Tumour cells of 18 primary tumours were not stained, whereas in the remaining 43 cases, NCAM was expressed in less than 5% tumour cells. Similar results were obtained when NCAM expression was evaluated at the RNA level.

[The actual role of bilateral neck exploration in the treatment of primary hyperparathyroidism].

Surgery is the only curative treatment for primary hyperparathyroidism (pHPT). Surgical exploration is recommended for all patients with biochemically documented pHPT and signs or symptoms of the disease. Some patients are asymptomatic, others have subtle symptoms that disappear after parathyroid surgery.

[Intraoperative quick parathyroid hormone assay in thyroid surgery: preliminary experience on 36 cases].

Through the analysis of our preliminary experience on 36 consecutive cases of thyroid surgery, we assessed the feasibility of the rapid intraoperative assay of the intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH) as predictive risk factor of hypocalcemia versus seric calcium level on the first post-operative day to select the patients eligible to an early discharge. Furthermore, we managed to determine if iPTH level during thyroid surgery could point out the cases in which parathyroid autotransplantation is necessary, as the macroscopic evaluation of the parathyroid gland's viability is inadequate.