Combined endoscopic and surgical management of Dieulafoy vascular malformation.

Background: Dieulafoy's disease (exulceratio simplex) is an uncommon cause of gastric hemorrhage as a result of an abnormally large, submucosal, eroded gastric artery, often located in the upper part of the stomach. It represents a clinical challenge because of the intermittent nature of massive bleeding accounting for a constantly fatal course in conservatively (nonsurgically or nonendoscopically) treated patients. Published therapeutic options include techniques of endoscopic hemostasis or operative procedures.

Trends in multiple births in Italy: 1955-1983.

On the basis of the numbers of single and multiple births routinely collected by the Central Institute of Statistics, trends in multiple births in Italy over the period 1955-1983 were analyzed. Between 1955 and 1983 the frequency of multiple births declined by about 25% (from 12.6/1000 deliveries to 9.

A linear model suitable for assessing graft patency in controlled clinical trials. SINBA Group.

In clinical trials carried out to assess the efficacy of different drugs in reducing the frequency of occlusion after coronary artery bypass, the ratio of the number of patients with at least one occluded anastomosis to the number of patients catheterized up to a given day is a widely adopted statistic. In the early evaluation (at 1 or 2 months after surgery), this is affected by the distribution of timing of angiography and it tends to underestimate the cumulative probability of occlusion because patients whose anastomoses are all patent at angiography and occlude between angiography and the day at which the ratio is estimated do not contribute their events to the numerator of the ratio. One may sensibly assume that this underestimate does not affect the evaluation of the efficacy of treatments tested "within" the trial.

Cell kinetics: an independent prognostic variable in stage II melanoma of the skin.

The prognostic role of cell kinetics (expressed as 3H-thymidine labelling index, 3H-TdR LI) was assessed on 145 patients with pathologic stage II melanoma subjected only to therapeutic lymph node dissection. The 3H-TdR LI determined on metastatic nodes was related to relapse-free survival and to survival. In particular, 3-year relapse-free survival was significantly different from patients with slowly and rapidly proliferating melanomas (40% vs 22%, P = 0.

Proliferative activity of primary breast cancer and of synchronous lymph node metastases evaluated by [3H]-thymidine labelling index.

The [3H]-thymidine labelling index ([3H]TdR LI) has been used to evaluate and comparatively analyse the proliferative activity of different tumour lesions from the same patient. The analysis was performed on the primary tumour and its synchronous lymph node metastasis from 210 patients operated on for breast cancer. A direct relation was observed between the proliferative activity of the two different lesions (Spearman correlation coefficient = 0.