[CIRRNET® - learning from errors, a success story].

CIRRNET® is the network of local error-reporting systems of the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation. The network has been running since 2006 together with the Swiss Society for Anaesthesiology and Resuscitation (SGAR), and network participants currently include 39 healthcare institutions from all four different language regions of Switzerland. Further institutions can join at any time.

Effects of a multidisciplinary inpatient intervention on body composition, aerobic fitness, and quality of life in severely obese girls and boys.

Purpose: The last few decades have seen a major increase in the prevalence of juvenile obesity. Inpatient treatment programs are used mainly in children with severe obesity and related comorbidities. The aim of this study was to evaluate the gender differences of an 8-week multidisciplinary inpatient program on body weight, body composition, aerobic fitness, and quality of life of severely obese children and adolescents.

[Computed tomographic diagnosis of dissecting aneurysm of the aorta].

Twenty-four patients with dissecting aortic aneurysms have been examined by CT and possible causes of mistaken diagnosis are discussed. Failure to diagnose a dissection by CT may be due to atypical localisation and thrombosis of the aortic dissection; dissections of small volume, particularly in the ascending aorta; failure to demonstrate an intimal flap and inadequate contrast enhancement. A false positive diagnosis may be due to fibrotic, inflammatory or neoplastic periaortic changes, aneurysm of the sinus of Valsalva, or artifacts.

Androgen and estrogen effect on guinea pig seminal vesicle muscle: a combined stereological and biochemical study.

A combined electron microscopic stereological and biochemical study of the smooth muscle cells of guinea pig seminal vesicles was performed in intact, castrated, castrated and dihydrotestosterone- or estradiol-treated adult animals. Castration led to cell atrophy as determined stereologically by a decreased single cell volume and biochemically by no change in DNA content coupled with an increase in the DNA concentration. Treatment of castrates with dihydrotestosterone restored both the stereological and biochemical parameters of the cell size to slightly supranormal levels.