Palliative care in patients with ovarian cancer and bowel obstruction.

Objective: Malignant bowel obstruction (MBO) is usually a pre-terminal event in patients with ovarian cancer. However, because of the lack of data in literature, decisions around surgical intervention, non-resectional procedures, or medical treatment of MBO in patients with ovarian cancer cannot be lightly undertaken. We analyzed medical and surgical procedures, performance status, nutritional status, cachexia, and their prognostic value in this group of patients.

Unilateral phrenic nerve paralysis: a rare complication after total thyroidectomy for a large cervico-mediastinal goitre.

Unilateral phrenic nerve paralysis is a rare complication of cervico-mediastinal goitre. It occurs when adhesions grow between the intrathoracic part of the thyroid and the nerve, specially where the goitre enters the mediastinum behind the first rib. The damage may be caused by strain of the nerve due to the descent of the goitre into the chest or may be caused by the surgical manoeuvres during thyroidectomy performed by cervical approach.

Thyroid cancer histotype changes as observed in a major general hospital in a 21-year period.

The existing registries of thyroid carcinoma are seldom comparable as far as epidemiological data, diagnostic criteria and histopatological description are concerned. Epidemiological studies report a progressive increase in the incidence of thyroid carcinoma in the last twenty years and in both sexes this increase of incidence has been referred to papillary histotype. Data collected from surgical series show a rate of thyroid carcinomas from 7 to 20% of total thyroid surgeries.