Burden of an educational program on end of life management in a Internal Medicine ward: a real life report.

Background And Aim: Appropriate end of life (EOL) management in Internal Medicine wards is challanging. The aim of this study was to analyze the burden of an educational program on EOL management in a Internal Medicine ward. Materials and methods: We retrospectively analysed characteristics and management of patients consecutively died in an italian Internal Medicine ward along one year.

Mean-field annealing for phase unwrapping.

Use of mean-field annealing theory is proposed for solving the phase-unwrapping (PU) problem. PU is formulated as a constrained optimization problem for the field of integer corrections to be added to the wrapped gradient field. A deterministic algorithm is described to provide an approximation of the average of the correction field over the global minima of the cost function.

Myocardial injury after off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting operation.

Objective: Perioperative myocardial ischemia is less pronounced in off-pump coronary artery bypass (OPCAB) compared to on-pump coronary artery bypass; however, the threshold over which the postoperative release of cardiac troponin I (cTnI) release and creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) after OPCAB should be considered clinically relevant is unknown. The study was designated to evaluate if perioperative myocardial damage, measured by means of postoperative release of cTnI and CK-MB, has an influence on short- and mid-term outcome after OPCAB operations.

Methods: Two hundred and sixty-one unselected patients undergoing OPCAB had cTnI and CK-MB measured preoperatively and nine times postoperatively.

Tachyarrhythmia due to atrial fibrillation in an intragastric balloon carrier: coincidence or consequence?

A morbidly obese patient is reported who underwent insertion of a BioEnterics Intragastric Balloon (BIB) as a pre-surgical procedure (ie. prior to restrictive gastric banding). While carrying the BIB, the patient suffered an episode of severe supraventricular tachyarrhythmia (atrial fibrillation).

Fibrosarcoma of the thigh. Case report and literature review.

Sarcomas of the soft tissue constitute a fairly rare group of neoplasms localized mainly at the level of the extremities. Apart from clinical and semeiotic investigations, diagnosis is based on imaging techniques. Among these (ultrasound, CT, NMR and angiography), all of which are helpful in diagnosis, NMR seems to provide the most complete data and sensitivity and specificity.