Pneumothorax after acupuncture.

Acupuncture is a well-known form of complementary medicine that is increasingly being used worldwide. Despite being rare, pneumothorax is the most common serious complication described in acupuncture. A 79-year-old woman was admitted to the emergency department with a pneumothorax.

Sclerosing mesenteritis: a benign cause of mesenteric mass lesions.

Sclerosing mesenteritis is a rare disease of the mesentery. Associations with surgery, trauma, autoimmunity and paraneoplastic syndrome have been suggested, but most of the cases remain idiopathic. Diagnosis is often incidental, based upon the finding of a single or multiple mesenteric lesions on abdominal CT and histopathological confirmation.

[Leg ulcer: conservative treatment].

During 16 years 202 patients with leg ulcer have been studied prospectively. Whenever possible, cure has been obtained in ambulatory, which was the main objective. Surgery was preferentially made after the cure of the ulcer.

[Extended surgery in locally invasive pancreatic cancer. An original revascularization technique].

The end results of surgery for pancreatic tumors remains very poor. In patients with locally invasive tumors a by-pass type of surgery is usually performed with low survival and poor life quality. Seven patients with locally invasive pancreatic tumors were operated by the authors and extensive radical surgery was done with good results.

[Multiple organ resections in surgery of the colon and rectum].

Colorectal cancer patients with regional invasion or metastatic disease present low life expectancy. Radical surgical treatment is the only potentially curative procedure, with significant good results being reported. Thirty two patients with either regional invasion or metastatic disease were submitted to surgery with good survival rate.