Preoperative Carbohydrate Loading in Patients Undergoing Thoracic Surgery: A Quality-Improvement Project.

Purpose: The purpose of this project was to implement carbohydrate loading in patients undergoing thoracic surgery in an effort to decrease postoperative pain, nausea, and length of stay as a part of an enhanced recovery after surgery protocol.

Design: This quality-improvement project used a preintervention and postintervention design.

Methods: Carbohydrate loading was given to 50 patients before undergoing thoracic surgery.

Symptom Management for Patients With Esophageal Cancer After Esophagectomy.

KD is a 67-year-old man with a medical history of hypertension, asthma, and a 20-pack/year smoking history who developed progressive dysphagia 8 months ago. Upon consultation with his primary care provider, he underwent an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) for evaluation. A friable mass was visualized at the gastroesophageal junction, and biopsies confirmed adenocarcinoma of the esophagus.

The Toxicity and Benefit of Various Dosing Strategies for Interleukin-2 in Metastatic Melanoma and Renal Cell Carcinoma.

Interleukin-2 (IL-2) therapy has been used with success in curing meta-static renal cell carcinoma and melanoma in a small minority of patients. However, the benefits can be accompanied by severe toxicity. This review of the literature discusses varying doses of IL-2 and their associated re-sponse rates and the toxicities associated with treatment.

Supratentorial extraventricular anaplastic ependymoma with extracranial metastasis.

Ependymoma is a relatively rare malignancy accounting for 2.0% of all primary central nervous system tumors in adults. Extracranial metastasis is a very uncommon complication of gliomas, especially of anaplastic ependymomas.