Imaging in metastatic breast cancer, CT, PET/CT, MRI, WB-DWI, CCA: review and new perspectives.

Background: Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer in women and remains the second leading cause of death in Western countries. It represents a heterogeneous group of diseases with diverse tumoral behaviour, treatment responsiveness and prognosis. While major progress in diagnosis and treatment has resulted in a decline in breast cancer-related mortality, some patients will relapse and prognosis in this cohort of patients remains poor.

Intestinal malrotation and Meckel's diverticulitis in a 19-month-old boy.

Acute intestinal obstruction is a common paediatric surgical emergency and should be considered in any child presenting with vomiting, abdominal pain and abdominal distension. Many causes of bowel obstruction arise from congenital anomalies and recognition of the underlying cause of obstruction can be challenging in these settings. These cases can be further complicated if two or more congenital anomalies are present.

The effect of systemic inflammation on human brain barrier function.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) plays an important role in the clinical expression of neuropsychiatric symptoms during systemic illness in health and neurological disease. Evidence from in vitro and preclinical in vivo studies indicate that systemic inflammation impairs blood-brain barrier function. In order to investigate this hypothesis, we evaluated the association between systemic inflammatory markers (leucocytes, erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein) and BBB function (cerebrospinal fluid/serum albumin ratio) in 1273 consecutive lumbar punctures.