Recruitment-to-inflation ratio to assess response to PEEP during laparoscopic surgery: A physiologic study.

Study Objective: During laparoscopic surgery, the role of PEEP to improve outcome is controversial. Mechanistically, PEEP benefits depend on the extent of alveolar recruitment, which prevents ventilator-induced lung injury by reducing lung dynamic strain. The hypotheses of this study were that pneumoperitoneum-induced aeration loss and PEEP-induced recruitment are inter-individually variable, and that the recruitment-to-inflation ratio (R/I) can identify patients who benefit from PEEP in terms of strain reduction.

Transesophageal Endoscopic Ultrasound Fine Needle Biopsy for the Diagnosis of Mediastinal Masses: A Retrospective Real-World Analysis.

Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) plays an important role in the diagnosis and staging of thoracic disease. Our report studies the diagnostic performance and clinical impact of EUS fine needle aspiration (FNA) in a homogenous cohort of patients according to the distribution of the enlarged MLNs or pulmonary masses. We retrospectively reviewed the diagnostic performance of 211 EUS-FNA in 200 consecutive patients with enlarged or PET-positive MLNs and para-mediastinal masses who were referred to our oncological center between January 2019 and May 2020.

Do we really need fine-needle biopsy needle for an ultrasound-guided biopsy of pancreatic adenocarcinoma? A retrospective study.

Objective: Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-guided FNB was not demonstrated to be better than EUS fine-needle aspiration (FNA) to obtain adequate samples for diagnosis of pancreatic tumors. We report our experience using a 22-gauge needle aspiration to obtain both cytologic and histologic samples.

Patients And Methods: In a total of 232 patients (51% men), 22-gauge needles (Cook Medical) were used to obtain a cytological sample (between 2008 and 2016, Cohort A) and a cytologic and a histologic sample (between 2016 and 2019, Cohort B) to evaluate the usability of this needle to collect material for cytologic and histologic examination.

The true panel of cystic fibrosis mutations in the Sicilian population.

Background: The aim was to establish the true risk of having an affected child with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) in the Sicilian infertile population.

Methods: A longitudinal CFTR screening of 1279 Sicilian infertile patients for all CFTR mutations sequencing the entire gene by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) was performed from patient's blood.

Results: One patient out of 16 was a carrier of a CFTR mutation.

Molecular analysis of mutations and polymorphisms in the CFTR gene in male infertility.

Mutations of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) gene and polymorphisms, such as the (TG)m and Tn polymorphic loci in intron 8 at the splice acceptor site of exon 9, can cause male infertility. The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency of the most prevalent cystic-fibrosis-causing mutations, the IVS8-Tn alleles and IVS8-TG12 variant in the presence of IVS8-5T in patients with altered semen parameters (group I with obstructive azoospermia, group II with secretory azoospermia and group III with severe oligozoospermia) compared with a control group with normozoospermia. CFTR mutations were found in 26.