The British journal of radiology
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The aim of this paper is to describe the efficacy of ultrasound-guided drainage of breast abscesses with special attention to the risk of recurrence and the need for surgical treatment in a consecutive patient population. 151 patients, 89 with puerperal and 62 with non-puerperal breast abscesses, were treated with ultrasound-guided drainage, by needle or catheter under local anaesthesia. Follow-up punctures were performed at 2 or 3 day intervals until the clinical condition and ultrasound findings had improved. All patients were treated with oral antibiotics. ⋯ There were no reports of newly diagnosed breast cancer in the 2 year follow-up period. This study supports the use of ultrasound-guided drainage in puerperal and non-puerperal breast abscesses. The method is less invasive than traditional surgery and has a high rate of success.
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Venous access catheters are employed for a wide variety of reasons. On removal of the catheter, the subcutaneous catheter cuff can be difficult to extract; retention of the cuff has recognized complications. We describe a simple ultrasound technique that assists in the identification of the cuff within the subcutaneous tissues, simplifying subsequent cuff removal. This may lead to a reduction in associated complications.
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Recent data show that axillary coverage can be obtained, but only through a selective CT-based treatment planning, as standard tangential fields are inadequate to deliver therapeutic doses. Currently, the replacement of axillary dissection with new techniques, such as sentinel node (SN) biopsy, makes it necessary to re-address the question about the real role of axillary irradiation, complicated by the differences in the anatomy of dissected and undissected axillary regions. The purpose of this paper is the dosimetric analysis of first axillary level coverage in standard irradiation of 15 breast-cancer patients treated with quadrantectomy and SN biopsy (negative finding). ⋯ The mean total dose received by the volume of interest was lower than 40 Gy in all but one patient. No patient had total irradiation of first nodal level; only one patient had 35% of the volume enclosed in the 100% isodose. Our analysis lead to the conclusion that therapeutic doses are not really delivered to first level axillary level nodes by a standard tangential field technique, and that specific treatment planning and beam arrangement are required when adequate coverage is necessary.
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Comparative Study
Hepatic bipolar radiofrequency ablation using perfused-cooled electrodes: a comparative study in the ex vivo bovine liver.
The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate the efficacy of the dual probe bipolar radiofrequency (RF) system with the perfused-cooled electrodes inducing coagulation necrosis in the ex vivo bovine liver. The perfused-cooled electrode that allows simultaneous internal cooling and interstitial hypertonic saline perfusion has been developed for RF ablation (RFA). RF was applied to excised bovine liver in a bipolar mode at 150 W using a 200 W generator with two perfused-cooled electrodes for 10 min. ⋯ The temperature at the mid-point between the two probes was higher in group A than other groups: 99 degrees C in group A, 88.9 degrees C in group B, and 94.3 degrees C in group C (p>0.05). The ratios of the diameter of the long-axis to the diameter of the vertical-axis of groups A, B and C were 1.1+/-0.1, 1.2+/-0.1, and 1.1+/-0.2, respectively (p<0.05). Bipolar RFA using intraelectrode cooling and the interstitial saline perfusion simultaneously produced ablation zones significantly larger than the area produced by only one measure.