New challenges in cholangiocarcinoma candidates for elective surgery: harnessing the microbiome dysbiosis.

Background: The gut microbiota, composed by several species of microorganisms, works to preserve the liver-gut homeostasis and plays an important role during digestion and absorption of nutrients, and in the immune response of the host. In this review, we analyzed the influence of microbiota in patients with cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) who were candidates for elective surgery.

Methods: A literature review was conducted to identify papers that provided empiric evidence to support that the altered microbiota composition (dysbiosis) is related also to CCA development.

Physics-based tissue simulator to model multicellular systems: A study of liver regeneration and hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence.

We present a multiagent-based model that captures the interactions between different types of cells with their microenvironment, and enables the analysis of the emergent global behavior during tissue regeneration and tumor development. Using this model, we are able to reproduce the temporal dynamics of regular healthy cells and cancer cells, as well as the evolution of their three-dimensional spatial distributions. By tuning the system with the characteristics of the individual patients, our model reproduces a variety of spatial patterns of tissue regeneration and tumor growth, resembling those found in clinical imaging or biopsies.

Usefulness of percutaneous elastography by acoustic radiation force impulse for the non-invasive diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis.

Objective: To determine the accuracy of the acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) technique for the diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis.

Materials And Methods: We present an observational, single-center study that included patients with suspected chronic pancreatitis in the period between October 2012 and September 2015 who underwent endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) and were classified according to the standard and Rosemont criteria. The same group of patients was assessed by the ARFI technology using ACUSON S2000™ equipment with Virtual Touch™ Quantification software for the assessment of pancreatic stiffness by obtaining the shear wave velocity (SWV) in the head, body and tail of the pancreas.