Inhibition of lymphocytic neuropathy target esterase predicts the development of organophosphate-induced delayed polyneuropathy.

Neuropathy Target Esterase (NTE) is the molecular target in the nervous system for organophosphorus esters (OP) when they cause delayed polyneuropathy. Some NTE activity was recently found also in blood lymphocytes. An unsuccessful suicide attempt with the widely used pesticide chlorpyrifos (0,0-diethyl-0-3,5,6,-trichloro-2-pyridyl phosphorothioate) is reported, where prior inhibition of lymphocytic NTE correlates with the delayed development of polyneuropathy. A 42-year-old man drank approximately 300 mg/kg chlorpyrifos. The subsequent severe cholinergic syndrome lasted for 17 days with varying degrees of severity. Thirty days after intoxication the clinical and electrophysiological examination of the peripheral nervous system was normal but lymphocytic NTE was about 60% inhibited. On day 43 the patient began to complain of paresthesia and leg weakness. Clinical examination, electrophysiology and a nerve biopsy revealed signs of a peripheral polyneuropathy, axonal in type. This case report indicates that measurement of lymphocytic NTE might be used as a clinical test to predict the development of OP-induced delayed polyneuropathy

SEUPD@CLEF: Team Lgtm on Argument Retrieval for Controversial Questions

This document demonstrates the work of the LGTM Team of the University of Padua’s participation in CLEF 2022 Touchè Task 1, creating a system to retrieve arguments for controversial questions. This system aims to provide a solution to assist users who search for arguments to be used in conversations and retrieves a pair of sentences from a collection of arguments. In the various runs, we used a custom parser for parsing the document collection, a custom indexer, the BM25 Similarity, the DataMuse API for query expansion and boosting in Searcher. We also tried to improve the system by using different stoplists, stemmers and apply re-ranking based on sentiment analysis and readability of the document

Redefining the role of radiology in the postoperative management of laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB)

Background: Upper gastro-intestinal series (UGI) are routinely employed in early and late postoperative management of LAGB patients, with the aim to assess early or late complications and to perform band adjustment. We here report the prospective results of our series in order to redefine the role of radiology in the post- operative management. Methods: From September 1993 through January 2006, 2000 patients had LAGB at our hospital. In 2000 we abandoned routine UGI series in all patients at post-op day 1. Since then, 869 UGI were performed on 373 patients (295 F, 78 M, average age 40 (16- 67) years) who were either symptomatic (early and late postoper- atively) or had inadequate weight loss. We compared these patients with a control group of 38 subjects undergone yearly UGI after LAGB with satisfactory weight loss and uneventful follow-up. Results: No postoperative mortality or gastric perforation was reported. Major postoperative complications included 21 (5.6%) late large-volume gastric slippage (127.4 + 52.3 mL) with outlet obstruc- tion and 15 (4%) middle volume (39.46 + 23.32 mL) with patent out- let. 12% of these patients were operated via perigastric approach while 2% via pars flaccida. In the control group a little gastric pouch (9.9 + 12 mL) without clinical relevance was observed in 13.2%. Tube disconnection was reported in 16 cases (4.3%) who experi- enced acute loss of satiety, while none in the control group. Conclusion: An extensive radiological protocol is unnecessary for the postoperative management of LAGB, since a prompt cus- tomized approach allows a safer and better treatment of patients with complications or insufficient weight loss. Only large and mid- dle slippages mandate re-do surgery

Redefining the role of radiology in the postoperative management of laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB).

Background: Upper gastro-intestinal series (UGI) are routinely employed in early and late postoperative management of LAGB patients, with the aim to assess early or late complications and to perform band adjustment.We here report the prospective results of our series in order to redefine the role of radiology in the postoperativemanagement. Methods: From September 1993 through January 2006, 2000 patients had LAGB at our hospital. In 2000 we abandoned routine UGI series in all patients at post-op day 1. Since then, 869 UGI were performed on 373 patients (295 F, 78 M, average age 40 (16-67) years) who were either symptomatic (early and late postoperatively) or had inadequate weight loss. We compared these patients with a control group of 38 subjects undergone yearly UGI after LAGB with satisfactory weight loss and uneventful follow-up. Results: No postoperative mortality or gastric perforation was reported. Major postoperative complications included 21 (5.6%) late large-volume gastric slippage (127.4 + 52.3 mL) with outlet obstruction and 15 (4%) middle volume (39.46 + 23.32 mL) with patent outlet. 12% of these patients were operated via perigastric approach while 2% via pars flaccida. In the control group a little gastric pouch (9.9 + 12 mL) without clinical relevance was observed in 13.2%. Tube disconnection was reported in 16 cases (4.3%) who experienced acute loss of satiety, while none in the control group. Conclusion: An extensive radiological protocol is unnecessary for the postoperative management of LAGB, since a prompt customized approach allows a safer and better treatment of patients with complications or insufficient weight loss. Only large and middle slippages mandate re-do surgery