Association between treatment with colchicine and improved survival in a single-centre cohort of adult hospitalised patients with COVID-19 pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Objectives: The outbreak of COVID-19 posed the issue of urgently identifying treatment strategies. Colchicine was considered for this purpose based on well-recognised anti-inflammatory effects and potential antiviral properties. In the present study, colchicine was proposed to patients with COVID-19, and its effects compared with 'standard-of-care' (SoC).

Image-aided estimate of tumor burden in Hodgkin's disease: evidence of its primary prognostic importance.

Purpose: To explore a more direct method for evaluating tumor burden (TB) in Hodgkin's disease (HD) and to verify its prognostic importance.

Patients And Methods: The volume of TB at diagnosis was directly and retrospectively measured in 121 HD patients through images of the lesions recorded by computed tomographic (CT) scan of the thorax, abdomen, and pelvis for all deep sites of involvement and many superficial ones, and by ultrasonography (US) for the remaining superficial lesions.

Results: The TB, which was obtained from the sum of the volumes of all the lesions measured on CT scans and US and normalized to body-surface area (relative TB [rTB]), showed a median value of 102.

Lomustine and melphalan cannot be replaced by cyclophosphamide and etoposide without reducing efficacy in MOPPEBVCAD chemotherapy for advanced Hodgkin's disease.

Background And Objectives: To evaluate the feasibility, toxicity and preliminary results of a potentially less toxic variant of the MOPPEBVCAD chemotherapy regimen for advanced Hodgkin's disease: MOPPEBVCyED, in which cyclophosphamide and etoposide replace lomustine and melphalan, respectively, with the remaining components being unaltered.

Design And Methods: The study was multicenter, prospective and randomized, and enrolled 67 patients with newly diagnosed stage IIB, III, IV Hodgkin's disease (62 were expected on the grounds of statistical considerations). Radiotherapy was restricted to sites of bulky involvement or to areas that responded incompletely to chemotherapy.

The role of surgery in the treatment of gastrointestinal lymphomas other than low-grade MALT lymphomas.

Background And Objective: A bias in clinical investigations on gastrointestinal lymphomas is the lack of testing the intention to treat as to resection, emergency conditions at presentation and selection brought about by the evaluation of feasibility of surgery.

Design And Methods: A prospective study involved 154 patients with gastrointestinal nodular or high-grade MALT lymphomas, 111 with a gastric and 43 with an intestinal presentation. The decision to resect or treat conservatively was left to clinicians, on condition that it was previously defined for each patient.

A variant of ProMACE-CytaBOM chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with threefold higher drug dose size but identical cumulative dose intensity. A pilot study of the Italian lymphoma study group (GISL).

Background And Objective: The positive results of high-dose chemotherapy followed by rescue with bone marrow progenitor cell transplantation are generally ascribed to the high dose size (DS) of the drugs given. However, a concomitant marked increase in dose intensity (DI) is always involved. With the aim of comparing the role of DS and DI in non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, a variant of Fisher's ProMACE-CytaBOM regimen was designed in which the projected cumulative drug DIs remained the same as in the original schedule but the DSs were tripled.

Diagnostic approach to lymph node enlargement.

Background And Objective: How to reach the correct diagnosis of a lymph node enlargement is still a problem which strongly challenges the knowledge and experience of the clinician. Organized and specifically oriented literature on the right sequential steps and the logical criteria that should guide this diagnostic approach is still lacking.

Methods: The authors have tried to exploit available knowledge and their personal experience by correlating a large body of information regarding size, physical characteristics, anatomical location of enlarged lymph nodes, and the possible epidemiological, environmental, occupational and clinical categorization of this condition.

Long-term results from MOPPEBVCAD chemotherapy with optional limited radiotherapy in advanced Hodgkin's disease.

The purpose was to verify the 5-year results of the MOPPEBVCAD chemotherapy regimen with limited radiotherapy in relation to the promising preliminary data. Mechlorethamine, vincristine, procarbazine, prednisone, epidoxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, lomustine, melphalan, and vindesine were delivered according to a schedule derived through hybridization, intensification, and shortening of the corresponding alternating CAD/MOPP/ABV regimen. Radiotherapy was restricted to sites of bulky involvement or to areas that responded incompletely to chemotherapy.