[Use of Valtrac in digestive surgery. Initial clinical experience].

Stapling instruments are being currently used for digestive or colorectal anastomoses with definite advantages. The authors report their initial clinical experience about BAR utilization to restore intestinal continuity after upper digestive and colorectal resections. The authors have been carried out 20 anastomoses on 18 patients: 11 males and 7 females.

Primary tumor receptorial status and axillary metastases: their prognostic significance.

Data on the prognostic value of receptorial status are controversial. On the basis of our results, receptorial status has no significance as an independent role; only the number of involved nodes and hormonal therapy have this prognostic role. Free of disease survival curves according Kaplan and Meier show that there are no statistically significant differences either in patients with low neoplastic recurrences (pN0) or in those patients with high risk (pN1) among women with tumor ER+ and ER-.

The influence of hormone receptors and hormonal adjuvant therapy on disease-free survival in breast cancer: a multifactorial analysis.

The prognostic value of estrogen (ER) and progesterone (PgR) receptor status and the influence of hormonal adjuvant therapy on disease-free survival (DFS) in breast cancer were evaluated in 680 women after radical and modified radical mastectomy. The effect of 17 variables, including clinical data, TNM, hormone receptor status, histology and adjuvant therapy, on the DFS observed was analyzed, using a multivariate proportional hazard model. Multifactorial analysis revealed that DFS was strongly related to the number of positive axillary nodes (P less than 0.