Identifying optimal candidates for active surveillance in low-grade intermediate-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.

Objective: The intermediate-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (IR-NMIBC) prognostic group is heterogeneous. Growing evidence supports the role of active surveillance (AS) for patients with low-risk NMIBC, however, no clear data exists considering IR-NMIBC. The aim of the study was to assess the risk of recurrence of patients eligible for AS based on the International Bladder Cancer Group (IBCG) stratification.

"I Am Not Just a Prisoner": the effects of social identification on well-being in Italy.

Recent research on social cures has posited that one's social identity associated with group membership can promote adjustment and affect well-being, especially for vulnerable individuals. In this study, we argue that, although the negative consequences of group-based stigma affect prisoners' well-being, having multiple social identities can protect them and mitigate the detrimental effects of stigma. The results of this cross-sectional study reveal that group identification with prisoners ( = 52) was negatively associated with well-being and anticipated discrimination.

Ezetimibe Enhances Lipid Droplet and Mitochondria Contact Formation, Improving Fatty Acid Transfer and Reducing Lipotoxicity in Alport Syndrome Podocytes.

Mitochondrial dysfunction is a critical factor in the pathogenesis of Alport syndrome (AS), contributing to podocyte injury and disease progression. Ezetimibe, a lipid-lowering drug, is known to inhibit cholesterol and fatty acid uptake and to reduce triglyceride content in the kidney cortex of mice with AS. However, its effects on lipid droplet (LD) utilization by mitochondria have not been explored.

Sequence modeling and design from molecular to genome scale with Evo.

The genome is a sequence that encodes the DNA, RNA, and proteins that orchestrate an organism's function. We present Evo, a long-context genomic foundation model with a frontier architecture trained on millions of prokaryotic and phage genomes, and report scaling laws on DNA to complement observations in language and vision. Evo generalizes across DNA, RNA, and proteins, enabling zero-shot function prediction competitive with domain-specific language models and the generation of functional CRISPR-Cas and transposon systems, representing the first examples of protein-RNA and protein-DNA codesign with a language model.

A machine learning-based analysis for the definition of an optimal renal biopsy for kidney cancer.

Objective: Renal Tumor biopsy (RTB) can assist clinicians in determining the most suitable approach for treatment of renal cancer. However, RTB's limitations in accurately determining histology and grading have hindered its broader adoption and data on the concordance rate between RTB results and final pathology after surgery are unavailable. Therefore, we aimed to develop a machine learning algorithm to optimize RTB technique and to investigate the degree of concordance between RTB and surgical pathology reports.

The Detrimental Effect of Metabolic Syndrome on Long-term Renal Function in Patients Undergoing Elective Partial Nephrectomy for Small Renal Masses.

Background And Objective: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a clinical condition associated with higher rates of overall and cardiovascular mortality. There is scarce evidence regarding the impact of MetS on surgical and functional outcomes for patients undergoing partial nephrectomy (PN) for clinically localized small renal masses (SRMs).

Methods: We analyzed data from a prospectively maintained institutional database for 690 patients with cT1a renal cancer undergoing PN between 2000 and 2023 at a tertiary referral center.

Mitomycin C vs. Bacillus Calmette-Guerin for treatment of intermediate-risk nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer patients-A comparative analysis from a single center.

Background: Induction followed by 1 year maintenance instillation of intravesical Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is the standard treatment for intermediate-risk (IR) nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) patients. Few data exist on the efficacy of Mitomycin C (MMC) instillation in this setting.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 226 IR-NMIBC patients classified by the International Bladder Cancer Group (IBCG) and 250 IR-NMIBC intravescical treatment-naïve patients classified by the European Association of Urology (EAU).

Prospector Heads: Generalized Feature Attribution for Large Models & Data.

Feature attribution, the ability to localize regions of the input data that are relevant for classification, is an important capability for ML models in scientific and biomedical domains. Current methods for feature attribution, which rely on "explaining" the predictions of end-to-end classifiers, suffer from imprecise feature localization and are inadequate for use with small sample sizes and high-dimensional datasets due to computational challenges. We introduce prospector heads, an efficient and interpretable alternative to explanation-based attribution methods that can be applied to any encoder and any data modality.

The Impact of Second Opinion Expert Pathology Review in Patient Management at the Time of Transurethral Resection of the Bladder.

Background And Objective: Pathological features in non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer specimens are pivotal in determining correct patients' therapeutic management. Sparse data exist regarding the importance of second opinion performed by an expert uropathologist. This study aimed to assess the importance of a second opinion by an expert uropathologist in the management of bladder cancer.

Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio predicts bowel ischemia in non-strangulated adhesive small bowel occlusions: a retrospective analysis from an acute care surgical service.

Background: Adhesive small bowel obstruction (ASBO) is a leading cause of hospitalization in emergency surgery. The occurrence of bowel ischemia significantly increases the morbidity and mortality rates associated with this condition. Current clinical, biochemical and radiological parameters have poor predictive value for bowel ischemia.

Pulmonary lesion after surgery for renal cancer: progression or new primary?

Purpose: To investigate clinical and radiological differences between kidney metastases to the lung (RCCM +) and metachronous lung cancer (LC) detected during follow-up in patients surgically treated for Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC).

Methods: cM0 surgically-treated RCC who harbored a pulmonary mass during follow-up were retrospectively scrutinized. Univariate logistic regression assessed predictive features for differentiating between LC and RCCM + .

Centralization of care for rare genetic syndromes associated with cancer: improving outcomes and advancing research on VHL disease.

Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease is a rare genetic syndrome caused by a germline pathogenic variant in one VHL allele. Any somatic event disrupting the other allele induces VHL protein (pVHL) loss of function, ultimately leading to patients developing multiple tumours in multiple organs at multiple timepoints, and reducing life expectancy. Treatment of this complex, rare disease is often fragmented, as patients visit specialist clinicians in isolation at different medical centres.

Peri- and post-operative outcomes of robot-assisted radical cystectomy after the implementation of the EAU guidelines recommendations for collecting and reporting complications at a high-volume referral center.

Purpose: No studies relied on a standardized methodology to collect postoperative complications after robot-assisted radical cystectomy (RARC). The aim of our study was to evaluate peri- and post-operative outcomes of patients undergoing RARC adhering to the European Association of Urology (EAU) recommendations for reporting surgical outcomes and using a long postoperative follow-up.

Materials And Methods: 246 patients who underwent RARC with intracorporal urinary diversion at a single tertiary referral center with a postoperative follow-up ≥ 1 year for survivors.

Long-term functional outcomes in patients undergoing radical nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma and tumor thrombus.

Background: Up to 15% of patients with locally advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) harbors tumor thrombus (TT). In those cases, radical nephrectomy (RN) and thrombectomy represents the standard of care. We assessed the impact of TT on long-term functional and oncological outcomes in a large contemporary cohort.

Preoperative risk calculator for the probability of completing nephron sparing for kidney cancer.

Purpose: In absence of predictive models, preoperative estimation of the probability of completing partial (PN) relative to radical nephrectomy (RN) is invariably inaccurate and subjective. We aimed to develop an evidence-based model to assess objectively the probability of PN completion based on patients' characteristics, tumor's complexity, urologist expertise and surgical approach.

Design, Setting And Participants: 675 patients treated with PN or RN for cT cN cM renal mass by seven surgeons at one single experienced centre from 2000 to 2019.

Use of 18F-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose (18F-FDG) PET/CT for lymph node assessment before radical cystectomy in bladder cancer patients.

Objective: To assess the diagnostic performance of 18F-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomograpy (PET)/computed tomography (CT) in nodal staging before radical cystectomy (RC) and pelvic lymph node dissection (PLND) for bladder cancer (BCa).

Materials And Methods: This analysis was based on a cohort of 199 BCa patients undergoing RC and bilateral PLND between 2015 and 2022. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) or immunotherapy (NAI) was administered after oncological evaluation.

Towards trustworthy seizure onset detection using workflow notes.

A major barrier to deploying healthcare AI is trustworthiness. One form of trustworthiness is a model's robustness across subgroups: while models may exhibit expert-level performance on aggregate metrics, they often rely on non-causal features, leading to errors in hidden subgroups. To take a step closer towards trustworthy seizure onset detection from EEG, we propose to leverage annotations that are produced by healthcare personnel in routine clinical workflows-which we refer to as workflow notes-that include multiple event descriptions beyond seizures.

Long-term analysis of microseism during extreme weather events: Medicanes and common storms in the Mediterranean Sea.

In this work, we analyze 12 meteorological events that occurred in the Mediterranean Sea during the period November 2011-November 2021 from a seismic point of view. In particular, we consider 8 Medicanes and 4 more common storms. Each of these events, in spite of the marked differences between them, caused heavy rainfall, strong wind gusts and violent storm surge with significant wave heights usually >3 m.