Publications by authors named "Vlachakis I"

Primary peritonitis is a rare infection in healthy children, mainly affecting patients with underlying medical disorders. We report a case of primary pneumococcal peritonitis in an immunocompetent 3-year-old boy. Diagnosis was made at laparotomy and cultures of the intra-abdominal pus yielded .

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Introduction: Acute pneumococcal peritonitis represents an unusual entity characterized by infection in the abdominal cavity despite the absence of an obvious causative source. Patients with portal hypertension such as cirrhotics and those with nefrotic syndrome are more frequently encountered in the every day practice.

Presentation Of Case: A 14 years old female was referred to our department by his general practitioner with a 24h history of right lower abdominal pain and fever.

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A case of an 11-year-old prepubertal girl with Fournier's gangrene is presented. The diagnosis was posed after the disease had progressed to the typical clinical picture of frank gangrene. A benign viral infection, common warts, possibly represents the initiating event of the development of this necrotizing soft tissue infection.

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Loeys-Dietz syndrome is a recently described genetic connective tissue disorder. The syndrome is associated with multiple nonvascular phenotypic anomalies but also aggressive arteriopathy, which has so far principally been shown to cause aortic root dilatation with subsequent dissection and rupture. We report the first ever case of a young man diagnosed with Loeys-Dietz syndrome with asymptomatic large bilateral popliteal artery aneurysms.

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Aim: Semapimod is an experimental drug that strongly inhibits macrophages and stimulates the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of semapimod on experimentally-induced acute intestinal ischemia-reperfusion syndrome in rabbits.

Methods: The experimental protocol included 16 adult male White New Zealand rabbits divided into two equal groups, A and B.

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Introduction: Hydatid disease is a parasitic infection caused by the tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus and is characterised by cystic lesions in the liver and lungs. Concomitant pulmonary and hepatic localization of hydatid cysts in childhood is unusual and represents a distinct clinical entity called hepatopulmonary hydatidosis.

Case Presentation: A ten-year-old Caucasian girl, a permanent resident of rural Greece, was admitted to hospital reporting a nonspecific symptomatology compatible with a diagnosis of viral infection.

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Splenic artery aneurysms are extremely rare lesions. Elective repair of these aneurysms is justified only if the aneurysm's size is greater than 2 cm and the predicted peri-operative mortality is below 0.5%.

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Aim: Carotid endarterectomy (CEA) is the gold standard for the treatment of carotid stenosis, but carotid angioplasty and stenting (CAS) has emerged as a potential less invasive therapeutic alternative to patients who would otherwise be considered as high risk for open surgery. The aim of this review was to pool the most current studies of the growing body of literature in which outcomes of CEA or CAS are compared in octogenarians and non-octogenarians to determine the current safety and efficacy of these therapeutic procedures, due to a lack of randomized controlled trials.

Methods: An electronic search of Medline, PubMed and Cochrane databases was supplemented by a review of bibliographies of relevant articles, as well as manual searches of relevant journals.

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Bleeding is a serious complication of patients undergoing endoscopic sphincterotomy and is the most common sphincterotomy-associated cause of death. Two patients presented bleeding after endoscopic sphincterotomy. Despite injection treatment with large amounts of epinephrine (1:10,000), the bleeding was uncontrolled.

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We conducted an uncontrolled retrospective study to evaluate endoscopic hemoclip application as the first-choice hemostatic treatment of gastrointestinal bleeding lesions from a wide variety of sources. Clinical data, endoscopic findings, complications, and short- and long-term outcomes were also investigated. A total of 52 patients (men/women, 36/16; age, 65 +/- 11.

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Background: Hemangiomas are the most common type of congenital anomaly in childhood. Although many resolve spontaneously, intervention is required when their growth could damage vital adjacent structures. Various therapeutic approaches to childhood hemangiomas with different types of laser have been described previously.

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Purpose: We analyze the results of the combined treatment with luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LH-RH) and human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) of a large series of patients with cryptorchidism.

Materials And Methods: Between 1987 and 1999 and after strict differentiation between cryptorchid, retractile and gliding testes, 2,467 boys with 2,962 cryptorchid-gliding testes were treated with the combined hormonal therapy. LH-RH was administrated as a nasal spray at a dosage of 1.

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