Quality of vision: A consensus building initiative for a new ophthalmologic concept.

Purpose: Many studies have addressed the quantification of visual acuity, and the conventional method of measuring it has so far demonstrated serious limitations. Vision testing requires new methods that can more precisely express the quality of vision as perceived by the patient.

Methods: This study employed the Delphi method of consensus building.

The rational use of albumin in patients with cirrhosis and ascites. A Delphi study for the attainment of a consensus on prescribing standards.

Background: Ascites is one of the most frequent severe complications in patients with liver cirrhosis. The treatment of this chronic disease usually requires the prolonged use of albumin, frequently continued even after patients' discharge from the hospital.

Aims: Aim of the study was to define a consensus among Italian physicians with regard to the use of albumin in patients with decompensated cirrhosis and ascites.

Sardinian delta beta zero-thalassemia: a further example of a C to T substitution at position -196 of the A gamma globin gene promoter.

Selective overexpression (50- to 100-fold) in adult erythroid cells of either G gamma or A gamma fetal globin gene is observed in hereditary conditions known as delta beta zero-thalassemia and hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin (HPFH). Recently, a C----T change at position -196 of an overexpressed A gamma globin gene from an Italian HPFH was hypothesized, on the basis of indirect evidence, to represent the cause of the functional defect. We now show that the same mutation is present in a different overexpressed A gamma-globin gene from a Sardinian patient with a different syndrome (delta beta zero-thalassemia).