Publications by authors named "Marulli Giuseppe"

Article Synopsis
  • SUVmax is a commonly used but limited parameter in assessing malignant lung nodules, with other metrics like lean body mass-adjusted values potentially offering more reliability.
  • A study of 567 patients with suspected lung tumors showed that 91% had primary lung tumors, predominantly adenocarcinomas, yet SUVmax struggled to differentiate between benign and malignant lesions effectively.
  • Survival analysis indicated that while SUVmax correlated with factors like overall survival and tumor characteristics, it lacked independent prognostic value, raising doubts about its sole reliance in clinical settings.
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Recently targeted therapy and immunotherapy have been demonstrated to improve survival in non-operable, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. The results of salvage lung resection in patients with initially unresectable advanced NSCLC after immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) or Target Therapy (TT) treatment remain limited and unclear. We aimed to define the outcomes of patients undergoing salvage surgery in a real-life setting.

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Despite the implementation of enhanced recovery programs, the reported average postoperative length of stay after robotic lobectomy remains as 4 days. In this prospective study, we present the outcomes of early discharge (on day 2) with telehealth home monitoring device after robotic lobectomy for lung cancer in selected patients. All patients with a caregiver were discharged on postoperative day 2 (POD 2) with a telemonitoring device provided they met the specific discharge criteria.

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: The aim of this paper is to describe our experience in the embolization of hypervascular giant thoracic tumors before surgical excision. : A single-center retrospective review of five trans-arterial preoperative embolization procedures executed between October 2020 and July 2024. Patients' demographics, anatomical aspects, feasibility, technique, and outcomes were reviewed.

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Objectives: Analysis of breath, specifically the patterns of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), has shown the potential to distinguish between patients with lung cancer (LC) and healthy individuals (HC). However, the current technology relies on complex, expensive and low throughput analytical platforms, which provide an offline response, making it unsuitable for mass screening. A new portable device has been developed to enable fast and on-site LC diagnosis, and its reliability is being tested.

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Background And Objective: Primary and secondary chest wall tumors (bone, breast, and soft tissue), congenital defects, and chest wall osteoradionecrosis often require extensive full-thickness local excisions to guarantee safe oncological margins (in cases of tumors) and complex reconstruction to provide stabilization and good biomechanical results avoiding postoperative respiratory failure. Thus, a personalized approach is required when dealing with chest wall defects, and reconstruction is planned. This review summarizes failed chest wall reconstruction procedures, identifies causes of failure, and highlights principles for complex chest wall reconstruction post-failure.

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Article Synopsis
  • Malignant tumors in the mediastinum often pose challenges in diagnosis and treatment, especially when near cardiovascular structures.
  • This study testing cine-magnetic resonance imaging (cine-MRI) showed it has improved accuracy over contrast-enhanced CT scans for detecting whether tumors invade cardiovascular structures.
  • Cine-MRI demonstrated significantly higher sensitivity (91% vs. 16%) and negative predictive value (93% vs. 54%) compared to CT, making it a valuable tool for preoperative assessment.
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Context.—: Mesothelioma subtyping into epithelioid and nonepithelioid categories plays a crucial role in prognosis and treatment selection, with emerging recognition of the impact of various histologic patterns.

Objective.

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Different factors, not limited to the lung, influence the progression of ILDs. A "treatable trait" strategy was recently proposed for ILD patients as a precision model of care to improve outcomes. However, no data have been published so far on the prevalence of TTs in ILD.

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Nuclear protein of the testis carcinoma is an exceedingly rare and poorly differentiated carcinoma characterized by BDR4::NUTM1 gene translocation. Typically, the tumor affects young adults, and no standardized recommendations for therapeutic management have been available since 2022; the clinical course remains mostly dismal. We report the successful multimodal treatment of a 13-year-old boy affected by a primary chest NUT-carcinoma with a novel NUTM1 rearrangement that remains in complete continuous remission at 30 months from diagnosis.

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Article Synopsis
  • A large multicenter study across 15 Italian hospitals evaluated the early and long-term outcomes of robot-assisted thoracoscopic thymectomy for thymic epithelial tumors, enrolling 669 patients from 2002 to 2022.
  • The study found that most patients (98%) underwent complete thymectomy with a low incidence of open conversion (3.4%) and no perioperative mortality; however, 7.7% experienced postoperative complications.
  • Results showed effective oncological outcomes with only 2 patients dying from tumor-related causes during follow-up, and the 5- and 10-year recurrence rates were low at 7.4% and 8.3%, respectively, indicating the procedure's safety and effectiveness.
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Thymic epithelial tumors (TETs) are rare mediastinal cancers originating from the thymus, classified in two main histotypes: thymoma and thymic carcinoma (TC). TETs affect a primary lymphoid organ playing a critical role in keeping T-cell homeostasis and ensuring an adequate immunological tolerance against "self". In particular, thymomas and not TC are frequently associated with autoimmune diseases (ADs), with Myasthenia Gravis being the most common AD present in 30% of patients with thymoma.

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Objectives: To assess the current practice of pulmonary metastasectomy at 15 European Centres. Short- and long-term outcomes were analysed.

Methods: Retrospective analysis on patients ≥18 years who underwent curative-intent pulmonary metastasectomy (January 2010 to December 2018).

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Video assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) lobectomy is the treatment of choice for early-stage lung cancer. It is safe and effective compared to open surgery, as demonstrated by a large body of scientific evidence over the last few decades. VATS lobectomy's evolution was driven by the need to decrease post-operative pain by reducing the extent of surgical accesses, maintaining the same oncological efficacy of open lobectomy with less invasiveness.

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Thymectomy is the gold standard in the treatment of thymic neoplasm and plays a key role in the therapeutic path of myasthenia gravis. For years, sternotomy has been the traditional approach for removing anterior mediastinal lesions, although the robotic thymectomy is now widely performed. The literature is still lacking in papers comparing the two approaches and evaluating long-term oncological and neurological outcomes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Tracheal stenosis is a serious complication that can greatly affect a person's quality of life, and the COVID-19 pandemic has increased its occurrence due to more people needing long-term intubation or tracheostomy for severe cases.
  • A study in Lombardy, Italy, observed 281 patients who had prolonged intubation or tracheostomy, finding that 8.5% developed tracheal stenosis after an average of 112 days.
  • The research indicated that having a tracheostomy and consuming alcohol raised the likelihood of developing stenosis significantly, highlighting the need for monitoring patients post-intubation for at least 200 days.
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Background: The identification of small lung nodules is challenging during mini-invasive thoracic surgery. Unable to palpate them directly, surgeons have developed several methods to preoperatively localize pulmonary nodules, including the computed tomography-guided positioning of coils or metallic landmarks (hook wire) or bronchoscopic marking.

Methods: We present a series of patients scheduled for the video-assisted thoracoscopic sublobar resection of small pulmonary nodules, in which we performed preoperative percutaneous computed tomography (CT)-guided nodule localization through the injection of a mixture of indocyanine green and human albumin.

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Cannabis can be related to respiratory diseases, but the relationship between smoking marijuana and the development of a pneumothorax has scarcely been investigated. We aimed to analyze, in patients with a history of cannabis smoking abuse submitted to lung apicectomy for a primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP), the correlation between the presence of cannabinoids in the resected lung and the detection of bullous emphysema within the same tissue. Patients undergoing lung apicectomy for a PSP were prospectively enrolled, and the correlation between the presence of cannabinoids in the resected lung tissue and histological finding of bullous emphysema was investigated with Fisher's exact test.

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Objectives: Total thymectomy in addition to medical treatment is an accepted standard therapy for myasthenia gravis (MG). Patients with severe generalized MG present life-threatening events, poor prognosis and higher risk of postoperative myasthenic crisis. The aim of our study is to investigate neurological and surgical results in patients with Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America (MGFA) class IV and V MG following thymectomy.

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Background: Catamenial pneumothorax (CP) is a rare type of spontaneous, recurring pneumothorax occurring in women, from the day before menstruation until 72 hours after its beginning. Conservative treatment is generally associated with recurrence of CP. Video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) approach allows not only to obtain diagnosis but also to guide definitive treatment of causing lesions, such as ectopic endometrial implants or diaphragmatic defects and fenestrations.

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Background: An increasing number of patients have been subjected to prolonged invasive mechanical ventilation due to COVID-19 infection, leading to a significant number of post-intubation/tracheostomy (PI/T) upper airways lesions. The purpose of this study is to report our early experience in endoscopic and/or surgical management of PI/T upper airways injuries of patients surviving COVID-19 critical illness.

Materials And Methods: We prospectively collected data from patients referred to our Thoracic Surgery Unit from March 2020 to February 2022.

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Introduction: With the spread of the use of implantable loop recorders (ILRs) by cardiologists for outpatient cardiac monitoring, intrathoracic migration represents a rare but possible complication occurring after the placement of these devices. Very few cases of ILRs intrathoracic migration into the pleural cavity have been reported, followed in even fewer cases by surgical removal of the devices, but in none re-implantation was performed.

Presentation Of Case: We report the first case of a patient with a new generation ILR accidentally migrated into the postero-inferior costophrenic recess of the left pleural cavity, successfully removed by uniportal video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) and submitted to re-implantation of a new ILR in the same operating session.

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Background: Air leak is the major factor that influences the permanence of the chest tube and the in-hospital length of stay (LOS) among patients undergoing lung resections. The aim of this study was to determine whether the use of digital chest drain systems, compared with traditional ones, reduced the duration of chest drainage and postoperative in-hospital LOS in patients undergoing video-assisted thoracoscopic (VATS) lobectomy.

Methods: The study was a prospective, randomized, multicenter trial.

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Background: Persistent air leak and the management of intraoperative blood loss are common threats in thoracic surgical practice. The availability of new procedures, technology and materials is constantly evolving topical hemostats and surgical sealants must be added to this toolkit. Topical hemostats and surgical sealants differ according to their chemical nature and physical characteristics, to their origin and mechanism of action, regulatory/registration and vigilance paths.

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Primary neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) of the lung represent a heterogeneous group of malignancies arising from the endocrine cells, involving different entities, from well differentiated to highly undifferentiated neoplasms. Because of the predominance of poorly differentiated tumors, advanced disease is observed at diagnosis in more than one third of patients making chemo- or chemoradiotherapy the only possible treatment. Complete surgical resection, as defined as anatomical resection plus systematic lymphadenectomy, becomes a reliable curative option only for that little percentage of patients presenting with stage I (N0) high-grade NETs.

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