Preoperative charcoal suspension tattoo for the detection of differentiated thyroid cancer recurrence

Recurrent differentiated thyroid carcinoma can easily be detected by means of ultrasound (US) and thyroglobulin, and often requires further surgical intervention. Revision surgery is often a technical challenge with significant risk of complications, considering the altered anatomy, with a possibility of leaving behind residual neoplasm. Preoperative US-guided tattooing localization has been introduced to reduce and prevent these potential problems during revision surgery. Encouraging results have been reported in the literature. Under US guidance, the lesion is identified and 0.5-2 ml of colloidal charcoal is injected in its proximity using a 23 gauge needle. The extraction is accompanied by injection at constant pressure of charcoal in order to leave a trace of pigment along the path of the needle till the skin. From April 2008 to January 2016 we performed revision surgery in 27 patients for lymph-nodes metastasis in differentiated thyroid cancer, using the technique of preoperative charcoal tattoo localization. Our previous study on the first group of 13 patients published in 2012, reported the preliminary results in terms of success rate and complications. The tolerance of charcoal injection was good for all patients and the procedure was demonstrated to be useful, contributing to the removal of metastatic lesion in 93% of procedures. We have registered minor surgical complications during revision in the central compartment of the neck: Transitory hypoparathyroidism in 2 cases (11%) and transitory vocal cord paresis in 3 cases (16%). Based on these results, preoperative charcoal tattoo localization in revision surgery of the neck for differentiated thyroid cancer recurrence can be considered a safe technique, easy to perform, with low-costs and useful during surgical procedures, providing a significant reduction of iatrogenic damage and risks

Ormoni gonadici e sessualità. (Capitolo 12)

Il ruolo degli ormoni sulla funzione gonadica e sulla sessualità viene illustrato in maniera esaustiva/This chapter deals with the role of hormones on human male sexuality

Tocilizumab for patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. The single-arm TOCIVID-19 prospective trial

BackgroundTocilizumab blocks pro-inflammatory activity of interleukin-6 (IL-6), involved in pathogenesis of pneumonia the most frequent cause of death in COVID-19 patients.MethodsA multicenter, single-arm, hypothesis-driven trial was planned, according to a phase 2 design, to study the effect of tocilizumab on lethality rates at 14 and 30 days (co-primary endpoints, a priori expected rates being 20 and 35%, respectively). A further prospective cohort of patients, consecutively enrolled after the first cohort was accomplished, was used as a secondary validation dataset. The two cohorts were evaluated jointly in an exploratory multivariable logistic regression model to assess prognostic variables on survival.ResultsIn the primary intention-to-treat (ITT) phase 2 population, 180/301 (59.8%) subjects received tocilizumab, and 67 deaths were observed overall. Lethality rates were equal to 18.4% (97.5% CI: 13.6-24.0, P=0.52) and 22.4% (97.5% CI: 17.2-28.3, P<0.001) at 14 and 30 days, respectively. Lethality rates were lower in the validation dataset, that included 920 patients. No signal of specific drug toxicity was reported. In the exploratory multivariable logistic regression analysis, older age and lower PaO2/FiO2 ratio negatively affected survival, while the concurrent use of steroids was associated with greater survival. A statistically significant interaction was found between tocilizumab and respiratory support, suggesting that tocilizumab might be more effective in patients not requiring mechanical respiratory support at baseline.ConclusionsTocilizumab reduced lethality rate at 30 days compared with null hypothesis, without significant toxicity. Possibly, this effect could be limited to patients not requiring mechanical respiratory support at baseline.Registration EudraCT (2020-001110-38); clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04317092)