Dtsch Arztebl Int
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Chronic, recurrent abdominal pain is common among children and adolescents. It interferes with everyday life, causes absence from school, and leads to frequent medical consultations, often involving burdensome diagnostic testing and protracted attempts at treatment. ⋯ A systematic approach to chronic recurrent abdominal pain in children and adolescents is key to ruling out organic diseases while avoiding unnecessary tests and treatments.
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Amniotic membrane transplantation (AMT) has a long tradition in ophthalmic surgery and has become very popular recently because of newly developed methods of tissue preservation. ⋯ AMT is an established technique in the treatment of various diseases of the external eye. In the last few years, AMT has brought about major advances in the reconstructive surgery of the ocular surface.
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The vital importance of imaging techniques in radiation oncology now extends beyond diagnostic evaluation and treatment planning. Recent technical advances have enabled the integration of various imaging modalities into the everyday practice of radiotherapy directly at the linear accelerator, improving the management of inter- and intrafractional variations. ⋯ IGRT is more precise and thus potentially safer than conventional radiotherapy. It also enables the application of special radiotherapeutic techniques with narrow safety margins in the vicinity of radiosensitive organs. Proper patient selection for IGRT must take account of the goals of treatment and the planning characteristics, as well as the available technical and human resources. IGRT should be used for steep dose gradients near organs at risk, for highly conformal dose distributions in the gastrointestinal tract where adjustment for filling variations is needed, for high-precision dose escalation to avoid geographic miss, and for patients who cannot lie perfectly still because of pain or claustrophobia.