Multidisciplinary strategies in bloodless medicine and surgery for patients undergoing pancreatectomy.

Background: Bloodless pancreatic surgery (BPS) is rarely performed and/or reported. We aim to characterize perioperative and anesthetic strategies in BPS.

Materials And Methods: A literature search was performed on MEDLINE looking for case reports/case series using search terms ("Jehovah's Witness" [All Fields]) AND ("Pancreatic Surgery" [All Fields] OR "Pancreaticoduodenectomy" [All Fields] OR "Distal Pancreatectomy" [All Fields]).

Recurrent Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors in the Imatinib Mesylate Era: Treatment Strategies for an Incurable Disease.

Introduction: Recurrence of gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) after surgical resection and imatinib mesylate (IM) adjuvant therapy poses a significant treatment challenge. We present the case of a patient who underwent surgical resection after recurrence and review the current literature regarding treatment.

Case Presentation: A 58-year-old man with a large intra-abdominal jejunal GIST was treated with complete surgical resection followed by IM.

AL Amyloidosis Complicated by Persistent Oral Bleeding.

A case of amyloid light chain (AL) amyloidosis is presented here with uncontrolled bleeding after a nonsurgical dental procedure, most likely multifactorial in nature, and consequently treated with a multidisciplinary approach.

Neutrophil elastase-mediated degradation of IRS-1 accelerates lung tumor growth.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Recent data suggest that tumor-associated inflammatory cells may modify lung tumor growth and invasiveness. To determine the role of neutrophil elastase (encoded by Elane) on tumor progression, we used the loxP-Stop-loxP K-ras(G12D) (LSL-K-ras) model of mouse lung adenocarcinoma to generate LSL-K-ras-Elane(-/-) mice.

Elastin fragments drive disease progression in a murine model of emphysema.

Mice lacking macrophage elastase (matrix metalloproteinase-12, or MMP-12) were previously shown to be protected from the development of cigarette smoke-induced emphysema and from the accumulation of lung macrophages normally induced by chronic exposure to cigarette smoke. To determine the basis for macrophage accumulation in experimental emphysema, we now show that bronchoalveolar lavage fluid from WT smoke-exposed animals contained chemotactic activity for monocytes in vitro that was absent in lavage fluid from macrophage elastase-deficient mice. Fractionation of the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid demonstrated the presence of elastin fragments only in the fractions containing chemotactic activity.