General anesthesia versus conscious sedation in mechanical thrombectomy for patients with acute ischemic stroke: systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background:  After recently published randomized clinical trials, the choice of the best anesthetic procedure for mechanical thrombectomy (MT) in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) due to large vessel occlusion (LVO) is not definite.

Objective:  To compare the efficacy and safety of general anesthesia (GA) conscious sedation (CS) in patients with AIS who underwent MT, explicitly focusing on procedural and clinical outcomes and the incidence of adverse events.

Methods:  PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane were systematically searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing GA CS in patients who underwent MT due to LVO-AIS.

Anti-EpCAM antibodies for detection of metastatic carcinoma in effusions and peritoneal wash.

Epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) has been used as diagnostic/prognostic marker and therapeutic target. The aim of the present study was to compare immunoreactivity of antibodies against distinct epitopes in the ectodomain of EpCAM for detection of carcinoma from different primary sites and of different histological types in effusions and peritoneal wash. Two antibodies against epitopes in the EGF-like domain I (clones Moc-31 and Ber-EP4) and one antibody against the epitope in the cysteine-poor region (158210) of EpCAM were used (all commercially available).