Neoadjuvant treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: Whom, when and how.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which is notorious for its aggressiveness and poor prognosis, remains an area of great unmet medical need, with a 5-year survival rate of 10% - the lowest of all solid tumours. At diagnosis, only 20% of patients have resectable pancreatic cancer (RPC) or borderline RPC (BRPC) disease, while 80% of patients have unresectable tumours that are locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC) or have distant metastases. Nearly 60% of patients who undergo upfront surgery for RPC are unable to receive adequate adjuvant chemotherapy (CHT) because of postoperative complications and early cancer recurrence.

Digital Image Decoder for Efficient Hardware Implementation.

Increasing the resolution of digital images and the frame rate of video sequences leads to an increase in the amount of required logical and memory resources necessary for digital image and video decompression. Therefore, the development of new hardware architectures for digital image decoder with a reduced amount of utilized logical and memory resources become a necessity. In this paper, a digital image decoder for efficient hardware implementation, has been presented.

MMP-9/BDNF ratio predicts more severe COVID-19 outcomes.

COVID-19 clinically manifests from asymptomatic to the critical range. Immune response provokes the pro-inflammatory interactions, which lead to the cytokines, reactive oxygen/nitrogen species, peptidases, and arachidonic acid metabolites enlargement and activation of coagulation components. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) contribute to tissue destruction in the development of COVID-19.

Dynamic monitoring of carcinoembryonic antigen, CA19-9 and inflammation-based indices in patients with advanced colorectal cancer undergoing chemotherapy.

Background: The roles of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and carbohydrate antigen (CA19-9) in monitoring the patient response to chemotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) are not clearly defined, and inflammatory indices, including the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), have been sparsely investigated for this purpose.

Aim: To aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the kinetics of CEA, CA19-9, NLR, LMR, PLR and SII in serum and patient response to chemotherapy estimated by computed tomography (CT) in patients with unresectable mCRC.

Methods: Patients with mCRC treated with a 1-line and 2-line chemotherapy underwent at least 3 whole-body spiral CT scans during response monitoring according to the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumour 1.

Ability to solve riddles in patients with speech and language impairments after stroke.

Introduction: Successful riddle solving requires recognition of the meaning of words, attention, concentration, memory, connectivity and analysis of riddle content, and sufficiently developed associative thinking.

Objective: The aim of the study was to determine the ability to solve riddles in stroke patients who do or do not have speech and language disorders (SLDs), to determine the presence of SLDs in relation to the lesion localization, as well as to define the relationship between riddle-solving and functional impairment of a body side.

Methods: The sample consisted of 88 patients.

Blunt trauma of the thoracic aortic isthmus.

Blunt trauma of the thoracic aorta is the second leading cause of death in traffic accidents, after head injuries. A polytraumatized patient, aged 40, was admitted, with trauma of the thoracic aortic isthmus, after a traffic accident. Adequate resuscitation and intensive therapy, angiographic and MSCT diagnostics enabled the urgent surgical treatment.