Capillaroscopy: a new application for the evaluation of vascular side-effects induced by chemotherapy.

Background: Cancer survivors are rising up, but this better survival is accompanied by possible treatments side-effects. In particular, cardiovascular effects are commonly reported, even if vascular damage is not necessarily connected to clinical manifestations. Periungual microcircle evaluation through capillaroscopy could identify asymptomatic patients with high risk of cerebro-cardio-vascular disease.

Capillaroscopy in psoriatic and rheumatoid arthritis: a useful tool for differential diagnosis.

Impairment of capillaries permeability and changes of microcirculation are associated with inflammatory arthritis. In order to demonstrate microvascular differences between psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) we analyzed capillaroscopic abnormalities such as megacapillaries, haemorrhages, ramifications, and avascular areas in patients affected by these two rheumatic disorders. Moreover to identify specific capillaroscopy patterns we analyzed the following parameters: venous limb diameter, arterial limb diameter, capillary loop diameter, amplitude of the capillary loop, linear density of capillaries (on 2 mm), and number of twisted capillaries (on 4 mm).

Real-time, non-invasive microscopic confirmation of clinical diagnosis of bullous pemphigoid using in vivo reflectance confocal microscopy.

Background: Bullous pemphigoid is an autoimmune disease affecting prevalently the elder. In vivo reflectance confocal microscopy is a non-invasive technique for real-time imaging of the skin with cellular-level resolution. No previous data has been reported about confocal microscopy of bullous pemphigoid.

Effective treatment of Kaposi's sarcoma by electrochemotherapy and intravenous bleomycin administration.

The present prospective study was aimed at evaluating the long-term efficacy of local electrochemotherapy (ECT) with the intravenous administration of bleomycin, on disease progression and viral activity in classic Kaposi's sarcoma (cKS), a vascular tumor related to human herpes virus-8 infection. Eighteen patients affected by isolate or multiple cutaneous lesions, refractory to conventional treatments, although in the absence of visceral involvement, were enrolled in a study. Follow-up visits were performed after 4 weeks and every 6 months for up to 48 months.

Quantitative color analysis for capillaroscopy image segmentation.

This communication introduces a novel approach for quantitatively evaluating the role of color space decomposition in digital nailfold capillaroscopy analysis. It is clinically recognized that any alterations of the capillary pattern, at the periungual skin region, are directly related to dermatologic and rheumatic diseases. The proposed algorithm for the segmentation of digital capillaroscopy images is optimized with respect to the choice of the color space and the contrast variation.