Management of bowel obstruction in patients with stage IV cancer: predictors of outcome after surgery.

Background: Patients with stage IV cancer and bowel obstruction (BO) present a complicated management problem. We sought to determine if specific parameters could predict outcome after surgery.

Methods: Records of patients with stage IV cancer and BO treated from 1991 to 2008 were reviewed.

Lumpectomy for mammary carcinoma. A retrospective analysis of 40 presumptive candidates from a surgical series.

This presumptive study concerns the value of lumpectomy as a curative procedure for minimal breast carcinoma, defined as an operable cancer no larger than 2 cm in diameter, with no palpable axillary lymph nodes, and, in peripherally located lesions, no Paget's disease. From 199 surgically treated mammary cancer patients, 40 cases met the minimal criteria. Thirty-eight of the minimal breast carcinoma patients had a radical mastectomy and two had a supraradical procedure.

Blindness in a patient with malignant histiocytosis.

Malignant histiocytosis (MH) is a rapidly fatal systemic disease for which there is no adequate therapy. A case of MH with involvement of both eyes resulting in bilateral blindness is presented. Infiltration with malignant cells was seen in the ciliary bodies at autopsy.