1,721,363 research outputs found
Therapy with interferons in blood diseases
No full textWe report the clinical experience gained with interferon treatment of B and T cell neoplasms, as well as of myeloproliferative and myelodysplastic syndrome
Catheter-related thrombosis in hematologic patients
Full text linkFor many years central venous catheters (CVC) have been utilized to monitor hemodynamics and to deliver parenteral nutrition, blood products, pharmacological therapies or infusion fluids. Recently, CVC use has greatly increased with significant impact on the administration of chemotherapy, stem cell transplantation and other treatments to cancer patients. However, CVC use may be accompanied by a variety of side-effects, which increase with the duration of implantation. The most common catheter-related complications are thrombotic events and blood-stream infections. The true incidence of these complications is still uncertain and has changed over time due to CVC device improvement. More data are available in solid tumor than in oncohematologic patients. Recently, much attention has been paid to the issues of prevention and treatment of these complications. Some strategies have been proposed: fixed dose warfarin or low molecular weight heparins have been evaluated in some clinical trials of thromboprophylaxis in this condition. However, more studies are still needed to address this issue. This review will focus on CVC use and complications in oncohematologic patients
Pathogenic flora in hematology patients. Gram-negative germs and their in vitro sensitivity to antibiotics
No full textThe results of microbiological research carried out on haematological patients admitted to the same ward are reported. The pathogenic flora observed consisted mainly of gram-negative germs (60%). Pseudomonas infections represented the most important problem because of their frequency and the consequent clinical problems. The in vitro sensitivity of 306 strains of gram-negative germs to 11 different antibiotics has been analysed. Amikacin proved to be easily the most effective antibiotic against isolated pathogen
Empiric treatment of infections in granulocytopenic patients with acute leukemia : a study on amikacin-carbenicillin-cotrimoxazole
No full textThe amikacin-carbenicillin-cotrimoxazole combination was used as an empiric treatment for febrile episodes in patients with acute leukemia and severe granulocytopenia. The choice of drugs was based on the finding in our institute that the majority of infections are caused by gram-negative rods, particularly Pseudomonas, with high percentage of strains resistant to gentamycin and tobramycin. Granulocyte transfusions were given to the patients who did not show satisfactory clinical improvement 48 h after start of antibiotic therapy. There were cures in 84.6% of the febrile episodes treated with this antibiotic combination, including five of eight episodes of microbiologically confirmed bacteremia. Survival after 21 days of antibiotic therapy amounted to 89.1%. Renal toxicity occurred in 10.9% of the episodes treated. The prompt use of this antibiotic combination seems to be a safe and efficacious therapeutic tool for treating these high-risk patients
Recombinant gamma-interferon as first line therapy for high risk myelodysplastic syndromes. Italian MDS Study Group
No full textThirty patients affected by previously untreated high risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) were treated with human recombinant gamma-interferon (r-IFN-gamma): 15 of them with a higher dose (HD) of 0.1 mg/sqm, three times a week and 15 with a lower dose (LD) of 0.01 mg/sqm, three times a week, both doses administered subcutaneously (s.c.). The therapy was fairly well tolerated and few major toxic events were documented. Sustained improvement of one or more clinico-hematologic parameters was observed in 43.3% of the patients (26.6% and 60.0% for the lower and higher dose, respectively). Median survival time from the start of IFN-gamma therapy was 15+ months (range: 1-26) for patients with refractory anemia with excess of blasts (RAEB) versus 5 months (range 2-12) for patients with RAEB in transformation (RAEB-t); 15+ months (range 1-26) for HD patients versus 8 months (range 2-23) for patients treated with LD regimen; 16+ months (range 9-26) for responders versus 7 months (range 1-22) for nonresponders. All these three variables (diagnosis, treatment, and response to treatment) turned out to be statistically significant (p = at least less than 0.01) at Cox's analysis
VAD protocol for treatment of advanced refractory multiple myeloma
No full textTwenty-three patients with advanced refractory multiple myeloma were treated with a combination chemotherapeutic regimen consisting of four-day continuous infusion of vincristine and doxorubicin plus intermittent high-dose dexamethasone (VAD). All patients included in the study were heavily pretreated with cytostatics and radiotherapeutic measures, and generally presented in poor general condition. In 3 of the 16 evaluable patients (18%) a response, and in 7 patients (44%) an improvement as defined by a reduction in tumor mass by more than 50% was achieved. Six patients had progressive disease. Evaluation of survival for responders (15 mos) versus non-responders (2 mos) by the landmark method seems to confirm the relative therapeutic efficacy of the VAD protocol in refractory multiple myeloma. The somewhat inferior response rate as well as the occurrence of considerable toxicity in several cases (when compared to the recent M. D. Anderson trial) may be related to differences in clinical features and pretreatment status of the two studies' populatio
Bone marrow histological modifications induced by alpha interferon in hairy cell leukemia
No full textThis paper reports the bone marrow histological picture in 7 patients with hairy cell leukemia treated with recombinant interferon. Bone marrow biopsies were performed at diagnosis, after 1, 3 and 7 months from the beginning of treatment and at 12 months at treatment suspension. The main modifications observed were a conspicuous reduction of hairy cell infiltrate, profound hypoplasia induced by the drug, early evidence of focal erythropoiesis followed by the appearance of other hematopoietic series and a progressive reduction of the reticulum. The clinical response to interferon therapy was good in all the patients studied; however future studies will have to evaluate the duration of response after treatment suspension
Osteolysis in chronic myeloid leukemia
No full textFour patients affected by chronic myeloid leukemia who developed osteolytic lesions in the course of the disease are described. According to the literature, the appearance of these alterations seems to signify an unfavorable prognosis, since they occur slightly before or even at the same time as the blastic transformation of the disease. However, in one case bone biopsy showed a metastasis of a solid tumor, emphasizing the importance of this procedure in order to give a more precise clinical evaluation, both diagnostic and therapeuti
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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