Publications by authors named "Alin Nicolescu"

Background: Primary hyperhidrosis (PH) is a somatic and idiopathic pediatric skin disease. The eccrine glands are tiny and very numerous, with approximately 3 million distributed throughout the skin. There is no commonly accepted amount of sweating to define hyperhidrosis, but people with this disease suffer real limitations integrating into society, which can be quantified through quality of life measurement scales.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the ability of patients to receive iontophoresis treatment for hyperhidrosis, a condition that causes excessive sweating.
  • It is a retrospective analysis conducted in Romania that reviewed data from 111 patients treated between 2013 and 2023, revealing a complete drop in patient visits during the pandemic.
  • The study highlights that despite the debilitating effects of hyperhidrosis on quality of life, patients and their families often do not see it as a pressing health issue needing immediate treatment.
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: Psoriasis is an immune-mediated chronic disorder associated with various comorbidities. Even though biologics and small-molecule inhibitors are the mainstay treatment for moderate-to-severe psoriasis, there is no current consensus regarding which agent should be used for a specific type of patient. This paper aims to test the reliability of blood-count-derived inflammatory markers in assessing treatment response to biologics and small-molecule inhibitors in psoriasis.

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Psoriasis is characterized by an aberrant immune response due to myeloid dendritic cells and T helper cells intertwining with keratinocyte hyperproliferation. Skin integrity alterations may predispose patients to physiological imbalances, such as xerosis, reduced elasticity, and increased friability. This study aims to assess the epidermal barrier dysfunction in chronic plaque psoriasis and gain a comprehensive view of the dynamic changes in the epidermal barrier during various topical therapies.

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Pruritus is an important symptom among patients affected by psoriasis. To date, no general agreement has been established regarding pruritus as a measure of psoriasis severity. This study aims to assess psoriatic pruritis prevalence and characteristics using a comprehensive itch questionnaire.

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Article Synopsis
  • There are special medicines called biological therapies that help treat a skin condition called psoriasis, especially for people with moderate to severe cases.
  • In this study, doctors looked at how well two specific medicines, ixekizumab and secukinumab, worked for adult patients in Romania who had psoriasis.
  • They found that ixekizumab seemed to help patients stay on the treatment longer and with fewer problems than secukinumab, and things like a patient's age and how long they had psoriasis also affected the treatment's success.
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Introduction: Limited real-world evidence exists about the burden of atopic dermatitis (AD) in patients receiving systemic or non-systemic therapies in clinical practices. ESSENTIAL AD was an observational study that aimed to fill this information gap.

Methods: ESSENTIAL AD enrolled (September 2021-June 2022) adult patients with physician-confirmed AD that was routinely managed with systemic and non-systemic treatment in a real-world setting from 15 countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

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Psoriasis is a chronic immune-mediated disease, linked to local and systemic inflammation and predisposing patients to a higher risk of associated comorbidities. Cytokine levels are not widely available for disease progression monitoring due to high costs. Validated low-cost and reliable markers are needed for assessing disease progression and outcome.

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Atrial septal defects (ASDs) present a significant healthcare challenge, demanding accurate and timely diagnosis and precise management to ensure optimal patient outcomes. Artificial intelligence (AI) applications in healthcare are rapidly evolving, offering promise for enhanced medical decision-making and patient care. In the context of cardiology, the integration of AI promises to provide more efficient and accurate diagnosis and personalized treatment strategies for ASD patients.

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Psoriasis is an immune-mediated, chronic disorder that significantly alters patients' quality of life and predisposes them to a higher risk of comorbidities, including liver fibrosis. Various non-invasive tests (NITs) have been validated to assess liver fibrosis severity, while blood-count-derived inflammatory markers have been proven to be reliable in reflecting inflammatory status in psoriatic disease. The fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) index became part of the newest guideline for monitoring psoriasis patients undergoing systemic treatment.

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Sudden cardiac death (SCD) in children is a devastating event, often linked to primary electrical diseases (PED) of the heart. PEDs, often referred to as channelopathies, are a group of genetic disorders that disrupt the normal ion channel function in cardiac cells, leading to arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. This paper investigates the unique challenges of risk assessment and stratification for channelopathy-related SCD in pediatric patients-Brugada syndrome, catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, idiopathic ventricular fibrillation, long QT syndrome, Anderson-Tawil syndrome, short QT syndrome, and early repolarization syndrome.

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: Due to its many benefits, indocyanine green (ICG) has gained progressive popularity in operating rooms (ORs) globally. This literature review examines its qualitative and quantitative usage in surgical treatment. : Relevant terms were searched in five international databases (1.

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Article Synopsis
  • * These lesions have been linked to autoimmune diseases (like generalized morphea and chronic graft versus host disease), tissue storage diseases, metabolic disorders, and some progeroid syndromes.
  • * Accurate diagnosis is crucial for distinguishing these lesions from each other to ensure the right treatment is administered.
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(1) Introduction: Psoriasis is a chronic, immune-mediated disease that negatively impacts patients' quality of life and predisposes them to cardiovascular or metabolic diseases. This paper aims to summarize the knowledge structure and future directions in psoriasis research by means of bibliometrics. (2) Material and methods: The Thomson Reuters Web of Science database was interrogated using preestablished keywords.

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Down syndrome is the most common chromosomal abnormality diagnosed in newborn babies. Infants with Down syndrome have characteristic dysmorphic features and can have neuropsychiatric disorders, cardiovascular diseases, gastrointestinal abnormalities, eye problems, hearing loss, endocrine and hematologic disorders, and many other health issues. We present the case of a newborn with Down syndrome.

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High-frequency ultrasonography (HF-USG) is a relatively new imaging method that allows the evaluation in a non-invasive manner of the skin layers and skin appendages. It is a diagnostic tool with increasing usefulness in numerous dermatological pathologies. High reproducibility, non-invasiveness and short diagnostic time make this method an increasingly used tool in dermatological practice.

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As medical-surgical emergencies, regardless of the causal agent, deep cervical space suppurations are not only a diagnostic challenge, but also a therapeutic one. In some cases, in spite of proper therapeutic measures, extremely severe complications can develop. A 5-year retrospective study (2016-2020) was conducted on a group of 107 patients suffering from cervical suppurations, being hospitalized and treated in the ENT Clinic of the "Sf.

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Psoriasis is not optimally controlled in spite of newly developed treatments, possibly due to the difficulty of objectively quantifying the disease's severity, considering the limitations of the clinical scores used in clinical practice. A major challenge addresses difficult-to-treat areas, especially in the absence of significant body surface involvement. It is controversial whether the severity evaluation of patients with several affected areas (having at least one difficult-to-treat area) should be done differently from current methods.

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Anomalous origin of the right coronary artery (RCA) from the pulmonary artery, ARCAPA, is an extremely rare congenital heart disease. Only 200 cases were reported from 1885 to the present. Patients diagnosed with ARCAPA can be either asymptomatic or can experience symptoms, such as heart murmur, dyspnea, or angina, shortly after birth or around 40-60 years of life.

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Although basal cell carcinoma is a well-known tumor with confirmed clinical and histopathology traits, prognosis factors and treatment options, new facets of this tumor emerge as innovative approach methods develop. Reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) allow a basal cell carcinoma's in vivo analysis of its depth of invasion, tumor margins prior to surgical approach and the tumor's response to a non-invasive treatment, evaluating simultaneously the tumor's vasculature. By RCM and OCT analysis, basal cell carcinoma has registered a groundbreaking discovery regarding a small (but with predictive factor potential) trait - the cleft, developing in between the tumor islands/nodules/chords and the surrounding tumor stroma; it was considered to date as a consequence of the tissue's histopathology processing.

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According to European consensus-based interdisciplinary guidelines for melanoma, cutaneous melanoma (CM) is the most deadly form of dermatological malignancy, accounting for 90% of the deaths of skin cancer patients. In addition to cutaneous melanoma, mucosal melanoma occurs in four major anatomical sites, including the upper respiratory tract, the conjunctiva, the anorectal region, and the urogenital area. As this cancer type metastasizes, a classification used in the current medical literature is the distinction between secondary lesions and primary malignant melanoma of the abdominal cavity.

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There are a wide variety of disfiguring dermatological conditions whose pathologic substrate is represented by the unwanted deposition of collagen from dermal fibroblasts. Pirfenidone has demonstrated efficiency in the treatment of disordered collagen production when applied topically. Due to a similar mechanism of action, we also hypothesize that a similar medication, nintedanib, might have similar applications.

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