Preventing relapses of breast cancer with modified radical mastectomy.

Better prevention and early detection have improved the percentage of early cancers among all the treated breast tumors to about 40%. After the first demonstration in Milan in 1981 that even conservative surgery can effectively prevent tumor relapses, radical and modified radical mastectomy was compared in 136 and 127 women, respectively. The groups were well stratified as regards age, menopause, T- and N-status.

[Staging of acute pancreatitis: use of computed tomography].

Since CT permits non-invasive imaging of the peripancreatic anatomy, the relationship between early CT findings and objective prognostic signs was evaluated in fifty-five patients with acute pancreatitis. The tomographic severity of pancreatitis was graded in 5 degrees in accordance with classification reported by Hill. An association of CT findings with objective clinical prognostic signs results in more accurate early identification of patients with a high risk of complications.

[Intestinal localizations of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (clinical and histopathologic considerations)].

The authors describe two cases of malignant lymphoma localized in the rectum and caecum respectively and, taking into account the data reported in the literature, comment on current classifications and on the latest typing methods, particularly those based on radio-immunological assay. They stress the importance of a uniform clinical classification for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes as well as the increasing amount of interest in these neoplasms, especially in relation to those carcinomas where differential diagnosis does not always prove an easy matter.

[Controlled clinical study on the efficacy of tiropramide hydrochloride in the treatment of irritable colon: comparison with octylonium bromide].

The effectiveness of a new calmodulin-independent spasmolytic, tiropramide hydrochloride, and octylonium bromide, an antispasmodic calmodulin-antagonist drug, was compared in a controlled trial performed in 60 patients with irritable bowel syndrome with spastic pattern. The effect of treatments was assessed according to the score reduction of following symptoms: abdominal pain, constipation, bloating and dyspepsia. Tiropramide hydrochloride administered at the daily dose of 300 mg for 30 days induced a faster and higher improvement than that observed during the administration of 120 mg daily of octylonium bromide.

[Cirsoid aneurysm: apropos of a clinical case].

The authors, after mentioning the anatomopathologic, physiopathologic and clinical features of cyrsoid aneurysms, presently classed in the chapter of the congenital artero-venous fistulas, show a case, angiographically discovered, of cyrsoid aneurysm with palmar location, elsewhere already subjected twice to unsuccessful operation, and successfully operated at the Institute of Surgical Pathology of the Pavia University. The Authors think the morphologic and topographic features of such lesion, its relative local malignancy and trend to relapsing, justify why the old denomination of cyrsoid aneurysm was kept, even in the frame of the more general chapter of artero-venous fistulas.