Acta Chir Belg
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Intracranial haemorrhage (ICH) is a rare but potentially devastating complication of oral anticoagulants (OAC). This raises the difficult clinical choice between either permanent cessation of OAC, or continuing OAC and if so, when to restart. To make this choice, one needs to balance the thrombo-embolic risk after cessation of OAC against the risk of recurrent intracranial haemorrhage when OAC are restarted. There are few published data to base this difficult clinical decision on. ⋯ In OAC-related intracranial haemorrhages, OAC can be stopped safely for a considerable period, with a very low overall thrombotic event rate. The recurrent bleeding risk after restarting OAC is low. Recurrent bleeding mostly occurred before restarting OAC and is probably caused by insufficient or unsustained correction of the initial coagulation deficit. Immediate reversal of anticoagulation provides the patient with the best possible treatment options including surgery. OAC-related intracranial haemorrhages can therefore be actively treated.
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Pancreatic trauma in children is relatively uncommon, but carries high morbidity and mortality rates when diagnosis is delayed. Preoperative diagnosis of pancreatic lesion might be difficult, especially in the case of isolated injury. ⋯ Authors emphasise the importance of CT scan and the responsibility of the first attending physician regarding both diagnosis and correct surgical management.
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Review Case Reports
Aortoduodenal fistula following aortobifemoral bypass.
A patient with a fistula between the aortic graft and the third portion of the duodenum was admitted in our institution and submitted to surgery that involved extra anatomical axillobifemoral bypass, prosthesis removal and bowel resection with a gastrojejunal Roux anastomosis. A prosthetic fistula after aortic surgery is a rare but potentially fatal complication. Erosion, infection and pseudoaneurysm are mechanisms in the pathogenesis of aortoenteric fistula. ⋯ A combination of endoscopy and CT or MRI may offer the best chance of detecting a fistula, but the most important tool to achieve diagnosis is clinical suspicion. An aortoenteric fistula should always be suspected in all patients who have undergone aortic graft surgery and present with gastrointestinal haemorrhage. The authors discuss the modern management of this challenging complication of aortic surgery.
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The requirement for a safe diagnostic strategy should be based on an overall post-test incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) of less than 1% during 3 month follow-up. Compression ultrasonography (CUS) has a negative predictive value (NPV) of 97 to 98% indicating a post-CUS incidence of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) of 2 to 3%. A post-CUS DVT incidence of 3% implicates that 90 to 120 DVTs per 1 million inhabitants will be overlooked each year indicating the need to improve the diagnostic work-up of DVT as much as possible. ⋯ The rapid ELISA VIDAS D-dimer assay has a sensitivity and NPV of 98.6 and 99.5% in two management studies for the exclusion of DVT irrespective of clinical score. The combination of a normal ELISA VIDAS D-Dimer test with clinical score assessment will reduce the post-test DVT incidence of less than 0.5% and the need for CUS testing by 40 to 50%. It is concluded that the sequential use of a rapid quantitative D-dimer test, clinical score and CUS appears to be safe and the most cost-effective diagnostic work-up of DVT.