Jenkinsvelling6128

After esophagectomy, various reconstruction routes can be considered for technical and oncologic objectives. The substernal route is believed to cause more dysphagia or delayed gastric emptying symptoms than the posterior mediastinal route. We evaluated and compared the quality of life (QoL) after reconstruction by either the substernal or posterior mediastinal routes in the McKeown procedure.

Between 2011 and 2018, 378 patients who received an esophagectomy and cervical esophagogastrostomy for esophageal cancer were followed up. Among these patients, 278 received reconstruction via the substernal route and 100 via the posterior mediastinal route. Patients completed the validated questionnaires, EORTC QLQ-C30 and QLQ-OES18, before surgery and at 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months after surgery. Linear mixed-effects models were used to examine changes in questionnaire scores over time.

One month after surgery, patients QoL deteriorated and more symptoms were observed than at baseline. Global health status, nausea and vomiting, and esophageal pain gradually recovered from 2 months and recovered to initial levels at 2 years. However, the other functional and symptom scales of the QLQ-C30 and OES18 were not normalized at 2 years after the operation. When comparing the substernal and posterior mediastinal routes, QLQ-OES18 symptom scales, such as eating, dysphagia, trouble with swallowing saliva trouble with taste and reflux, were no different between the two groups, even after adjusting confounding factors at 2 years after the operation.

The cervical esophagogastrostomy with a substernal route showed comparable QoL to reconstruction with a posterior mediastinal route.

The cervical esophagogastrostomy with a substernal route showed comparable QoL to reconstruction with a posterior mediastinal route.

The survival benefit of negative margins for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been demonstrated. However, there is no consensus regarding the optimal resection margin width. We assessed the impact of hepatic resection margin width for solitary HCC on overall (OS), recurrence-free (RFS), and liver-specific recurrence-free survival (LSRFS).

Clinicopathologic data were retrospectively collected for solitary HCC patients who underwent a negative margin hepatectomy (1992-2015). Margin width was categorized in tertiles as "narrow" (≤ 0.3cm), "intermediate" (0.31-1.0cm), or "wide" (> 1.0cm). Survival was compared among groups.

Of the 178 included patients, most were male (76%); median age, MELD score, and tumor size were 63years, 8, and 5.2cm, respectively; 93% were Child-Pugh class A. Median margin width was 0.5cm. Median follow-up and OS were 47.8months and 76.7months, respectively. There was no significant survival difference among narrow, intermediate, and wide margin groups with a median OS of 53months (IQR 21-not reached [NR]), 74months (IQR 14-138), and 97months (IQR 37-142) (p = 0.87), respectively. Median RFS was 33.0months; again, there was no difference among narrow, intermediate, and wide margin groups with a median of 31months (IQR 18-NR), 45months (IQR 14-NR), and 27months (IQR 11-NR), respectively (p = 0.66). Median LSRFS was 63.0months (IQR 14-NR) with no difference among groups (p = 0.87). In multivariate analyses, margin width was not associated with OS (p = 0.77), RFS (p = 0.74), or LSRFS (p = 0.92). Findings were similar in all subgroups analyzed (≤ 5cm, > 5cm, microvascular invasion, T1, T2/T3, anatomical or non-anatomical resection, major or minor hepatectomy).

Narrow margins appear to be oncologically safe and the feasibility of achieving wide margins should not determine resectability.

Narrow margins appear to be oncologically safe and the feasibility of achieving wide margins should not determine resectability.Postoperative ileus (POI) and constipation are common secondary effects of opioids and carry significant clinical and economic impacts. μ-Opioid receptors mediate opioid analgesia in the central nervous system (CNS) and gastrointestinal-related effects in the periphery. Peripherally acting μ-opioid receptor antagonists (PAMORAs) block the peripheral effects of opioids in the gastrointestinal tract, while maintaining opioid analgesia in the CNS. SU1498 While most are not approved for POI or postoperative opioid-induced constipation (OIC), PAMORAs have a potential role in these settings via their selective effects on the μ-opioid receptor. This review will discuss recent clinical trials evaluating the safety and efficacy of PAMORAs, with a focus on alvimopan (Entereg®) and methylnaltrexone (Relistor®) in patients with POI or postoperative OIC. We will characterize potential factors that may have impacted the efficacy observed in phase 3 trials and discuss future directions for the management and treatment of POI.

Traditional metrics may inadequately represent rates of attaining optimal oncologic care. We evaluated a composite "textbook oncologic outcome" (TOO) to assess the incidence of achieving an "optimal" clinical result after colon adenocarcinoma (CA) resection.

The National Cancer Database (NCDB) was queried to identify patients undergoing colectomy for non-metastatic CA between 2010 and 2015. TOO was defined as a margin negative resection with an AJCC compliant lymph node evaluation, no prolonged length of stay (LOS) or 30-day readmission/mortality, as well as receipt of stage appropriate adjuvant chemotherapy.

Among 170,120 patients who underwent colectomy at 1315 hospitals, 93,204 (54.8%) achieved TOO with large variations observed among facilities. While certain factors were achieved nearly universally (R0 margin, 95.6%; no 30-day mortality, 97.2%), avoidance of prolonged LOS (77.3%) and appropriate adjuvant chemotherapy (83.0%) were achieved less consistently. On multivariable analysis, Black race/ethnicity (OR 0.82, 95% CI 0.80-0.85), Medicaid insurance (OR 0.64, 0.61-0.68), and low-volume facility (< 50/year) (OR 0.83, 0.77-0.89) were associated with decreased likelihood of TOO. Achievement of TOO was associated with improved long-term survival (HR 0.45; 95% CI 0.44-0.46).

Roughly one-half of patients undergoing resection of CA achieved an optimal clinical outcome. TOO may be a more useful quality metric to assess patient-centric composite outcomes following surgical procedures.

Roughly one-half of patients undergoing resection of CA achieved an optimal clinical outcome. TOO may be a more useful quality metric to assess patient-centric composite outcomes following surgical procedures.Although optical coherence tomography (OCT) proved to be able to identify macrophage clusters, there are no available data on the possibility to obtain reproducible measurements of their circumferential extension and location. The purpose of the present post-hoc analysis of the CLIMA study was to revise the clinical and demographic variables of patients having coronary plaques with macrophages and to investigate the reproducibility of their quantitative assessment. A total of 577 patients out of 1003 undergoing OCT showed macrophage accumulation. Three groups were identified; group 1 (426 patients) without macrophages, group 2 (296) patients with low macrophage content (less than median value [67°] of circumferential arc) and group 3 (281) with high macrophage content arc [> 67°]. Patients with macrophages (groups 2 and 3) showed a higher prevalence of family history for coronary artery disease and hypercholesterolemia and had a significantly larger body mass index. Furthermore, group 3 had more commonly triple vessel disease and higher value of LDL cholesterol levels compared to the two other groups. The inter-observer agreement for macrophage interpretation was good R values were 0.97 for the circumferential arc extension, 0.95 for the minimum distance and 0.98 for the mean distance. A non-significant correlation between circumferential extension of macrophages and hsCRP values was found (R = 0.013). Quantitative assessment of macrophage accumulations can be obtained with high reproducibility by OCT. The presence and amount of macrophages are poorly correlated with hsCRP and identify patients with more advanced atherosclerosis and higher LDL cholesterol levels.Improvements in spatial and temporal resolution now permit robust high quality characterization of presence, morphology and composition of coronary atherosclerosis in computed tomography (CT). These characteristics include high risk features such as large plaque volume, low CT attenuation, napkin-ring sign, spotty calcification and positive remodeling. Because of the high image quality, principles of patient-specific computational fluid dynamics modeling of blood flow through the coronary arteries can now be applied to CT and allow the calculation of local lesion-specific hemodynamics such as endothelial shear stress, fractional flow reserve and axial plaque stress. This review examines recent advances in coronary CT image-based computational modeling and discusses the opportunity to identify lesions at risk for rupture much earlier than today through the combination of anatomic and hemodynamic information.To determine whether the assessment of individual plaques is superior in predicting the progression to obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) on serial coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) than per-patient assessment. From a multinational registry of 2252 patients who underwent serial CCTA at a ≥ 2-year inter-scan interval, patients with only non-obstructive lesions at baseline were enrolled. CCTA was quantitatively analyzed at both the per-patient and per-lesion level. Models predicting the development of an obstructive lesion at follow up using either the per-patient or per-lesion level CCTA measures were constructed and compared. From 1297 patients (mean age 60 ± 9 years, 43% men) enrolled, a total of 3218 non-obstructive lesions were identified at baseline. At follow-up (inter-scan interval 3.8 ± 1.6 years), 76 lesions (2.4%, 60 patients) became obstructive, defined as > 50% diameter stenosis. The C-statistics of Model 1, adjusted only by clinical risk factors, was 0.684. The addition of per-patient level total plaque volume (PV) and the presence of high-risk plaque (HRP) features to Model 1 improved the C-statistics to 0.825 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.823-0.827]. When per-lesion level PV and the presence of HRP were added to Model 1, the predictive value of the model improved the C-statistics to 0.895 [95% CI 0.893-0.897]. The model utilizing per-lesion level CCTA measures was superior to the model utilizing per-patient level CCTA measures in predicting the development of an obstructive lesion (p  less then  0.001). Lesion-level analysis of coronary atherosclerotic plaques with CCTA yielded better predictive power for the development of obstructive CAD than the simple quantification of total coronary atherosclerotic burden at a per-patient level.Clinical Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT0280341.

Adjustable gastric banding (AGB) is on the decline due to its relatively modest amount of expected weight loss, coupled with high rates of revision and complications such as band erosion. Management of eroded gastric bands can be challenging especially when complete intra-gastric erosion is followed by distal migration causing small bowel obstruction.

We present an endoscopic option of using a pediatric colonoscope to remove an eroded AGB causing jejunal obstruction.

Endoscopic removal of an eroded ABG causing bowel obstruction was successful.

Endoscopy remains a safe and relatively non-invasive approach to deal with such complications.

Endoscopy remains a safe and relatively non-invasive approach to deal with such complications.