Tuna cornea as biomaterial for cardiac applications.

Among available biomaterials, cornea is almost completely devoid of cells and is composed only of collagen fibers oriented in an orderly pattern, which contributes to low antigenicity. Thunnus thynnus, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, is a fish with large eyes that can withstand pressures of approximately 10 MPa. We evaluated the potential of this tuna cornea in cardiac bioimplantation.

Cardiac surgery in patients with acute intermittent porphyria.

Acute intermittent porphyria (AIP) is a disorder of the heme biosynthesis pathway of a specific inherited enzymatic defect. Many different environmental factors such as drugs, calorie restriction, infection etc., often play a key role in triggering a porphiric acute attack.

[Left atrial thrombosis in patients with antiphospholipid antibody syndrome and mesenchymal abnormal septum].

Antiphospholipid antibodies are a heterogeneous family of immunoglobulins that includes lupus anticoagulant and anticardiolipin antibodies. They are strongly associated with a clinical syndrome characterized by venous and arterial thrombosis and spontaneous fetal losses. This syndrome may be primary or else secondary to autoimmune or neoplastic diseases.

The reliability of urinary albumin assay by immunonephelometry in the clinical practice. The critical role of medical surveillance on laboratory routine.

Measurement of the urinary albumin excretion rate (UAER) is essential for the early diagnosis and monitoring of diabetic nephropathy; immunonephelometry is a procedure used worldwide for routine screening of diabetic patients. Since we have met with occasional inconsistent values of UAER in serial urine collections, we searched for possible sources of analytic error. To assess the best working conditions of the instrument in use, the stability of urine samples during storage and the need for previous urine centrifugation, we assayed repeatedly the six automatically diluted points of the standard curve (55.