Medicine
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Immigrants from undeveloped countries are a growing problem in Europe. Spain has become a frequent destination for immigrants (20% of whom are children) because of its geographic location and its historic and cultural links with Africa and Latin America. Eosinophilia is frequent in adult immigrants, travelers and expatriates coming from tropical areas. ⋯ Filariasis (41.9%), strongyloidiasis (29.6%) and schistosomiasis (22.2%) were the most frequent causes of increased levels of IgE. The area under the ROC curve showed similar values between eosinophil count and IgE levels in the diagnosis of helminthiasis (69% [95% confidence interval (CI) 63%-74%] vs 67% [95% CI 60%-72%], P = 0.24). Eosinophilia and hyper-IgE have a high value as biomarkers of helminthiasis in children coming from tropical and subtropical areas.
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Cardiac transplantation (CT) has been one of the great medical advances of the last nearly 50 years. We studied the explanted hearts of 314 patients having CT at Baylor University Medical Center Dallas from 1993 to 2012, and compared the morphologic diagnoses to the clinical diagnoses before CT. ⋯ The phrase "non-IC" is a general term that includes several subsets of cardiac diseases and simply means "insignificant narrowing of 1 or more of the epicardial coronary arteries," but it does not specify the specific cause of the heart failure leading to CT. A number of cardiac illustrations are provided to demonstrate the morphologic variability occurring among the patients with IC and non-IC.
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The aim of the study was to describe the imaging findings of Askin tumors on computed tomography (CT) and fluorine 18 fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET/CT). Seventeen cases of Askin tumors confirmed by histopathology were retrospectively analyzed in terms of CT (17 cases) and FDG-PET/CT data (6 cases). Fifteen of the tumors were located in the chest wall and the other 2 were in the anterior middle mediastinum. ⋯ At follow-up, 12 cases showed recurrence and/or metastases, 4 cases showed improvement or remained stable, and 1 was lost to follow-up. In summary, CT and FDG-PET/CT images of Askin tumors showed heterogeneous soft tissue masses in the chest wall and the mediastinum, accompanied by rib destruction, pleural effusion, and increased FDG uptake. CT and FDG-PET/CT imaging play important roles in the diagnosis and follow-up of patients with Askin tumors.
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The objective of this study was to assess the clinical role of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) analysis in noncystic focal liver lesion (FLL) classification/characterization. Six hundred liver magnetic resonances with multi-b (b = 50, 400, 800 s/mm) diffusion-weighted imaging (DwI) were retrospectively reviewed. Mean ADC was measured in 388 lesions (195 benign and 193 malignant) excluding internal necrotic areas. ⋯ Of all lesions, >1/3 (39.5%) presented values lower than 1 × 10 mm/s, with 90.0% chance of malignancy. Above 1.5 × 10 mm/s (about 20% of all lesions) chance of malignancy was 9.5%. DwI cannot assist in noncystic FLL characterization, but can help in FLL classification in about half the cases.