B Acad Nat Med Paris
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B Acad Nat Med Paris · Apr 2012
Practice Guideline[Pre-hospital management of adults with life-threatening emergencies].
In France, acute life-threatening situations are handled by the French Secours a Personne (assistance to persons) and emergency medical facilities. An unequivocal success, this early management of life-threatening emergency situations relies upon centralized call reception, medical dispatching, and immediate on-site emergency medical care. We describe the different emergency care providers and steps involved in the response to emergency situations. ⋯ In France, the ARS (Agences Régionales de Santé) is in charge of this procedure, as it provide funding for healthcare continuity--Reducing inequalities in access to emergency care. This will involve improving the network of SDIS brigades, making local medical facilities more responsive, delegating more medical procedures, on-site telemedicine, providing more helicopters equipped with healthcare facilities, more automated external defibrillators, and more dedicated neuro-vascular units.--First aid training must be made widely available. The French National Academy of Medicine has approved ten recommendations regarding organization and facilities.
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Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) are the most frequent sarcomas but were underdiagnosed until the beginning of this century. GIST derive from interstitial cells of Cajal and may develop all along the digestive tract. GIST are characterized by the expression of KIT (CD117), and also DOG-1, which was recently discovered by transcriptome analysis. ⋯ For example, patients with metastatic GIST and a duplication of KIT exon 9 should receive twice the usual dose of imatinib, while GIST with the PDGFRA p. D842 V mutation are resistant to imatinib. This article presents the main pathologic characteristics of GIST and the important insights that GIST research has provided for oncology in general.
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B Acad Nat Med Paris · Apr 2012
[Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: current aspects and new developments].
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a myocardial disorder characterized by left ventricular hypertrophy with no apparent cause (such as severe hypertension, aortic valve stenosis, etc.). The clinical diagnosis is based on cardiac imaging, commonly using 2D echocardiography and increasingly CMR. HCM is the leading cause of sudden death in young people, especially on the sports field. ⋯ Medical treatment with B-blockers or verapamil improves symptoms but has not been show to modify the clinical course. Patients with outflow obstruction and severe symptoms unresponsive to medical therapy are candidates for alcohol septal ablation or surgical myectomy. Current approaches focus on the prevention of sudden death by means of implantable defibrillators in high-risk patients.