1,720,959 research outputs found
Breast metastasis from malignant melanoma: A report of three cases
No full textBreast cancer is the commonest malignancy in women, however metastatic involvement of the breast represents a rare event. Melanoma and lymphoma are the most common malignancies involved in breast metastasis. Although it is usually an unexpected diagnosis, breast metastasis from melanoma should be considered in the differential diagnosis of breast disease every time that a new lump is discovered in a woman with a previous malignant melanoma, even years after the primary lesion. We describe in this paper our experience of three Caucasian females presented with metastatic melanoma to the breast. Despite the literature finding of a higher frequency of breast metastases in younger patients, probably because of the greater vascularization of the glands, two out of three of our cases occurred in post-menopausal women. The treatment of metastatic malignant melanoma of the breast is the excision of the lesion with clear margins, eventually followed by systemic therapy for the primary disease after comprehensive staging. The diagnosis of breast metastasis of melanoma is of great importance, since this finding represents a poor prognostic sign
Therapeutic options for body packers: surgical or conservative treatment? A single center experience and review of literature
No full textUNLABELLED: Body packing is a way to deliver packages of drugs hidden in body cavities. In Europe, as noted the latest report coming from the Brussels observatory, there are 74 million drugs consumers. Italy is in pole position and Perugia was considered as a "capital city" in the drug market. Body packers usually swallow the drug packets, although their insertion into the rectum and vagina has also been reported. The management depends on whether or not the patient becomes symptomatic. Surgery is indicated in presence of repeated bouts of drug toxicity not controlled by medical treatment, radiological evidence of packet retention in the stomach, intestinal obstruction or perforation. It is also important to emphasize that, in a multidisciplinary context, the patient's management before reaching the operating theater if symptomatic, is aimed to stabilization and is usually demanded to Intensive Care Unit (ICU) physicians. We present our center recent experience with body packers, managed both with surgical and conservative treatments.KEY WORDS: Body packers, Drugs, Emergency surgery, Foreign bodies
Oncologic reliability of nipple-sparing mastectomy for selected patients with breast cancer.
No full textBackground: Nipple sparing mastectomy (NSM) is the current surgical alternative to conventional techniques, when mastectomy is required. This less invasive procedure safeguards the integrity of the nipple areola complex (NAC), whose removal is recognized as a factor that exacerbates the patient's feeling of mutilation, however ensuring oncological radicality for women with breast cancer. Patients and Methods: From January 2003 to January 2011, 77 patients underwent Nipple Sparing Mastectomy (NSM). Patients were carefully selected according to specific criteria. When requested, postoperative radiotherapy on the residual glandular tissue was performed within 6 months of surgery. Patients were on close clinical and instrumental follow-up every 4 months for 2 years and every 6 months for the remaining 3 years. Results: Of the 77 patients who underwent NSM, 10 suffering from bilateral cancer were subjected to bilateral procedure, for a total of 87 performed procedures. Furthermore, in the same group, 13 NSMs were carried out for preventive purposes. The average diameter of resected tumors was 13.5 mm, with a range of 2 to 25 mm. During the follow-up (range 23-115 months, mean 50.33 months) 2 locoregional recurrences in the NAC were observed, identified through instrumental check, and surgically treated by NAG removal after 33 and 37 months respectively. Conclusion: According to the litterature data and confirmed by our experience, we consider NSM as an oncologically safe technique that, in the respect of inclusion criteria may be performed in any patient with indication to mastectomy. A careful selection of patients by a multidisciplinary team according to strict criteria is the key in determining feasibility as well as oncological safety and should lead the general acceptance and widespread use of such surgical technique
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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Optimizing therapeutic timing in patients undergoing mastectomy through use of the Tiloop® synthetic mesh: single-step surgery.
No full textPatients undergoing mastectomy for breast cancer have to face a long and elaborated therapeutic path, very often burdened by reoperation to replace the temporary expander, used to enlarge the submuscular pouch, with a definitive implant. Postoperative planning represents a critical moment of care, as it requires the integration of multiple treatments (chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormonotherapy) each with a specific deadline. We believe that in such a complex multidisciplinary approach, coordination among the different therapeutic phases should be the key to success. The aim of the Breast Unit is to manage rapidly the ad hoc paths set out for each patient in order to guarantee compliance with adequate therapeutic timing. With this purpose in mind we tested the advantage of immediate reconstruction with definitive implants, by using a polypropylene mesh which, prolonging the inferolateral profile of the pectoralis major muscle (PMM), allows for direct accommodation of the desired implant volume. This leads to a single-step surgical approach, guaranteeing at the same time reduced interference with adjuvant therapies and good aesthetic results. We applied this technique to 4 patients, one of which was bilateral and, in spite of the restricted number of cases, our results seem to be promising
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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