To Tie or Not to Tie-Over Full-Thickness Skin Grafts in Dermatologic Surgery: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

Background: Tie-over dressings are frequently used for skin grafts. Although a dressing is necessary for split-thickness skin grafts, their use in full-thickness skin grafts (FTSGs) is questionable.

Objective: This review was conducted to investigate the influence of different tie overs and dressings on graft take for FTSGs in cutaneous surgery.

Prepartum Depressive Symptoms Correlate Positively with C-Reactive Protein Levels and Negatively with Tryptophan Levels: A Preliminary Report.

Prepartum and postpartum depression have negative, and sometimes devastating, effects on women and their families. As inflammatory processes are related to depression in general, we hypothesized that inflammatory perturbations, prepartum and postpartum, contribute to triggering and worsening of symptoms of peripartum depression. We conducted a longitudinal preliminary study on 27 women at high risk for developing postpartum depression measuring SIGH-SAD scores at three time points: 35-38 weeks gestation, 1-5 days postpartum, and 5-6 weeks postpartum.

Relationship between duration of untreated psychosis and outcome in first-episode schizophrenia: a critical review and meta-analysis.

Objective: The duration of untreated psychosis may influence response to treatment, reflecting a potentially malleable progressive pathological process. The authors reviewed the literature on the association of duration of untreated psychosis with symptom severity at first treatment contact and with treatment outcomes and conducted a meta-analysis examining these relationships.

Method: English-language articles on duration of untreated psychosis published in peer-reviewed journals through July 2004 were reviewed.

Reconsidering the classification of schizophrenia and manic depressive illness--a critical analysis and new conceptual model.

The idea of 'disease entity' in psychiatry and the nosologic map of insanity with the distinction between dementia praecox (schizophrenia since Bleuler 1911) and manic depressive insanity, originally developed by Emil Kraepelin (1986), is an important landmark in the history of psychiatry (Jablensky 1995). This classification, however, has been vigorously debated throughout the years, and new evidence emerging from epidemiological, clinical, genetic and biological research demonstrates that the two nosological categories have distinct features as well as share many similarities in their risk factors, genetic predisposition, brain pathology, neurophysiology, clinical phenomenology and response to treatment, thus raising questions about the validity of the categorical classification of psychoses. In this paper we examine some of the similarities and differences between schizophrenia and bipolar illness emerging from recent biological and clinical research and attempt to clarify major inherent logical contradictions in the application of the 'disease' model of psychiatric diagnosis to the categorical classification of schizophrenia and bipolar illness.

The early stages of schizophrenia: speculations on pathogenesis, pathophysiology, and therapeutic approaches.

Schizophrenia is commonly considered a neurodevelopmental disorder that is associated with significant morbidity; however, unlike other neurodevelopmental disorders, the symptoms of schizophrenia often do not manifest for decades. In most patients, the formal onset of schizophrenia is preceded by prodromal symptoms, including positive symptoms, mood symptoms, cognitive symptoms, and social withdrawal. The proximal events that trigger the formal onset of schizophrenia are not clear but may include developmental biological events and environmental interactions or stressors.