Do patients with familial nonmedullary thyroid cancer present with more aggressive disease? Implications for initial surgical treatment.

Background: There are conflicting reports on whether familial nonmedullary thyroid cancer is more aggressive than sporadic nonmedullary thyroid cancer. Our aim was to determine if the clinical and pathologic characteristics of familial nonmedullary thyroid cancer are different than nonmedullary thyroid cancer.

Methods: We compared patients with familial nonmedullary thyroid cancer to a cohort of 53,571 nonmedullary thyroid cancer patients from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database.

The current state of in-vivo pre-clinical animal models for heart valve evaluation.

For over 30 years, animal models have remained a central critical component in the pre-clinical safety evaluation of prosthetic heart valves developed for use in humans. Though many advances have been made in valve design, no ideal replacement prosthesis has yet been developed. As a result, valve manufacturers continue to address issues relating to thrombogenicity, structural integrity, fluid dynamics and calcification in their designs.