[Bladder cancer screening with urine-based tumour markers - occupational medical experience].

Objective: Bladder cancer responds favourably to treatment and has a good survival rate, provided it is diagnosed at an early stage. Established methods exist for the early detection, however, their specificity and positive predictive value are not yet satisfactory. Innovative markers have been proposed, but still require validation in prospective studies.

[Implementation of a web based software for documentation and control of quality of an acute pain service].

Providing an acute pain service means accumulation of a large amount of data. The alleviation of data collection, improvement of data quality and data analysis plays a pivotal role. The electronic medical record (EMR) is gaining more and more importance in this context and is continuously spreading in clinical practice.

The effects of fenoterol inhalation after acid aspiration-induced lung injury.

Background: Acid aspiration is a serious complication that can occur during general anesthesia. Studies show that beta-agonists have beneficial effects on lung injury. Therefore, we tested the effect of the nebulized beta-agonist fenoterol on lung variables in a rodent model of acid-induced lung injury.

Hydrochloric acid aspiration increases right ventricular systolic pressure in rats.

Background And Objective: Pulmonary aspiration of gastric acid is a serious complication during anaesthesia and may cause aspiration pneumonitis and adult respiratory distress syndrome. The development of pulmonary hypertension may aggravate the initial course of the aspiration pneumonitis. The authors hypothesized that acid aspiration induces an acute increase in right ventricular pressure in the rat heart.

Early treatment with pentoxifylline reduces lung injury induced by acid aspiration in rats.

Study Objectives: To evaluate the effect of pentoxifylline treatment on gas exchange and mortality immediately after bilateral instillation of hydrochloric acid.

Design: Randomized, prospective, placebo-controlled trial.

Setting: Animal laboratory of a university hospital.

Cytokines down-regulate alpha1-adrenergic receptor expression during endotoxemia.

Objective: The reduced pressure response to norepinephrine in septic patients has directed our interest to the regulation of alpha1-adrenergic receptors in vitro and in vivo during conditions mimicking acute sepsis.

Design: Prospective animal trial followed by a controlled cell culture study.

Setting: Laboratory of the Department of Anesthesiology.

Endothelin-receptor gene-expression in rat endotoxemia.

Objective: The reduced vascular response to endothelin-1 has focused interest onto the regulation of the endothelin-receptor subtypes ET(A) and ET(B) during severe sepsis.

Design And Setting: Prospective animal trial followed by a controlled cell culture study in the laboratory of the Department of Anesthesiology.

Subjects: Male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 200-250 g, aortic vascular smooth muscle cell line A7r5.

Cytokine-mediated downregulation of vasopressin V(1A) receptors during acute endotoxemia in rats.

The reduced pressure response to vasopressin during acute sepsis has directed our interest to the regulation of vasopressin V(1A) receptors. Rats were injected with lipopolysaccharide for induction of experimental gram-negative sepsis. V(1A) receptor gene expression was downregulated in the liver, lung, kidney, and heart during endotoxemia.

Second malignancies after ewing tumor treatment in 690 patients from a cooperative German/Austrian/Dutch study.

Background: Ewing tumor treatment involves high cumulative doses of alkylating agents and topoisomerase inhibitors, drugs capable of inducing second cancers. We analyzed the second cancer risk in a large cohort of consistently treated patients.

Patients And Methods: Six hundred ninety Ewing tumor patients were treated between 1992 and 1999 with local therapy and vincristine.

Downregulation of angiotensin II type 1 receptors during sepsis.

Our study aimed to characterize the mechanisms underlying the attenuated cardiovascular responsiveness toward the renin-angiotensin system during sepsis. For this purpose, we determined the effects of experimental Gram-negative and Gram-positive sepsis in rats. We found that sepsis led to a ubiquitous upregulation of NO synthase isoform II expression and to pronounced hypotension.