The quality control in pancreatic surgery.

Aim: Over the past decade, several centralization programs for major pancreatic surgery have been implemented in hospitals with high procedural volumes. Although the impact of this process was altogether positive, also possible negative effects have been evidenced, above all the lack of comprehensive coverage and access to specialized centers. In order to solve these problems, it was proposed the utilization of an outcome-based and not volume-based center selection.

Pancreatic Injury Following Blunt Abdominal Trauma during a Soccer Game.

Unlabelled: This article reports a case of unusual pancreatic trauma, underestimated initially and treated surgically at a later stage. A 26-year-old man presented with an abdominal trauma sustained during a soccer game. The patient arrived 24 hours after the trauma with abdominal pain associated to vomiting and intestinal occlusion.

Expression profiling of angiogenic genes for the characterisation of colorectal carcinoma.

The development of new blood and lymphatic vessels is a crucial event for cancer growth, metastatic spread and relapse after therapy. In this work, the expression levels of chemokines, angiogenic and angiostatic factors and their receptors were determined in paired mucosal and tumour samples of patients with colorectal carcinoma and correlated with clinical and histological parameters by advanced multivariate analyses. The most important predictors to discriminate between tumour and paired normal mucosa turned out to be the levels of expression of plexin-A1 and stromal cell-derived factor 1 (SDF-1), the former overexpressed and the latter downregulated in tumours.

Surgery and adjuvant therapies in the treatment of stage IV melanoma: our experience in 84 patients.

Background And Aims: Survival rates of patients with stage IV melanoma are poor: Median survival is 7-8 months and 5-year survival rates about 5%. There is no agreement on the role of surgery at this stage. Most patients with metastatic melanoma are not able to undergo resection and usually are sent to systemic chemo- and immunotherapy.

[Adhesive small bowel occlusion: a clinical and therapeutic study of 163 consecutive patients].

The aim of this retrospective study is to evaluate the immediate and late outcomes of the surgical and conservative treatment of adhesive small bowel obstruction. A series of 163 consecutive patients affected by adhesive occlusion were analysed. 63 patients were submitted to emergency surgery and 100 to conservative treatment; 15 of these ones were operated on because they did not improve or deteriorated.