"Pink urine" in morbidly obese patients following gastric partitioning.

A pink coating on the inner surface of plastic urinary tubing, which gave the impression that the urine was pink, had frequently been noted 4 to 24 hours following gastric partitioning by means of a stapler in morbidly obese patients. A study was therefore done in 187 such patients as well as in 14 patients of normal weight who had undergone abdominal surgery of comparable magnitude. Postoperatively "pink urine" was observed in 32% of the obese patients but in none of the nonobese patients; however, a pink sediment remained following centrifugation of urine collected postoperatively from all the obese patients.

Treatment of tuberculous masses in the neck.

Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis was diagnosed in 23 patients from 1970 to 1980; 21 of them were immigrants. The masses ranged in diameter from 1.5 to 5.

Hodgkin's disease with predominant infradiaphragmatic involvement and massive invasion of the bone marrow. A necropsic study of nine cases.

The authors report the results obtained in the necropsic study of nine cases of the so-called acute, visceral form of Hodgkin's disease (HD). Most of the patients (six men and three women, ranging from 42 to 74 years of age) lacked peripheral lymphadenopathies and had fever, weight loss, abnormality of hepatic function, and pancytopenia. Mixed cellularity was diagnosed in two, diffuse fibrosis in four, and reticular subtype of lymphocyte depletion in three cases.

An outbreak of Staphylococcus epidermidis septicemia.

During 45 wk from August 1980 to June 1981, the catheter sepsis rate increased from a prior 2 to 34% (23 of 68 patients on intravenous hyperalimentation). The causative organism was Staphylococcus epidermidis, grown on blood cultures in 21 of the 23 patients and on the catheter-tips of all 23. Routine cultures of the catheter-tips of the 45 patients who received intravenous hyperalimentation during this period with no evidence of catheter sepsis grew S.