Primary Malignant Melanoma of Female Urethra: A Case Report and Review of Literature

We report a very rare case report of female diagnosed with primary malignant melanoma. A 65 years old diabetic elderly postmenopausal femalepresented with a history of intermittent blood spots on undergarments forfew days. Genital examination revealed a single, tan colored, soft chestnut size and polypoidal non ulcerated mass lesion protruding through theurethral meatus. Mass biopsy revealed poorly differentiated epithelial malignancy and immuno-histological analysis revealed positive with HMB45 and protein S-100 suggestive of melanoma. Metastatic work up for themalignancy was negative. Complete urethrectomy with Mitrofanoff procedure with inguinal lymph node dissection was performed. Histopathological examination was suggestive of malignant melanoma of urethra.Here we discuss the clinicopathological features and management optionpossible in this scenario

Laparoscopic Management of Adrenal Lesions Larger Than 5 cm in Diameter

Introduction: Laparoscopic adrenalectomy remains a controversial procedure for large tumors. The incidence of adrenocortical carcinoma increases and technical difficulty of adrenalectomy increases as the size increases. We examined the outcome and complications of laparoscopic adrenalectomy for such lesions. Materials and Methods: Twenty-nine patients underwent laparoscopic adrenalectomy, of whom 19 had tumors larger than 5 cm in diameter, having a median tumor size of 7.0 cm. They were compared with patients whose adrenal tumors were smaller than 5 cm. Results: Patients with small tumors (< 5 cm) had a significantly shorter median operative time of 90 minutes as compared to 145 minutes in those with large tumors (> 5 cm). There was no significant difference in the median hemoglobin drop (1.05 g/dL versus 1.30 g/dL), time for starting oral intake (24 hours in both groups) or hospital stay (3.5 days versus 4.0 days) between patients with small and large tumors, respectively. There were no intra-operative complications except for 1 incidence of supraventricular tachycardia in a patient with a large pheochromocytoma. There were no major complications seen in any of the patients and no open conversions. Histopathology of large tumors revealed 16 benign tumors (8 pheochromocytomas, 4 adenomas, 2 ganglioneuromas, 1 pseudocyst, and 1 myelolipoma) and 3 malignancies, of which 1 was primary adrenocortical carcinoma and 2 were metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Conclusion: In experienced hands, laparoscopic adrenalectomy is safe and feasible for large functioning adrenal tumors. Large adrenal tumors suspicious of harboring malignancy with no peri-adrenal involvement can be tackled laparoscopically

Super-mini percutaneous nephrolithotomy (SMP) vs retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) in the management of renal calculi <= 2 cm: A propensity matched study

Objective: To compare the effectiveness and safety of Super-Mini PCNL (SMP) and Retrograde Intrarenal Surgery (RIRS) in the management of renal calculi ≤ 2 cm. Patients and methods: A prospective, inter-institutional, observational study of patients presenting with renal calculi ≤ 2 cm. Patients underwent either SMP (Group 1) or RIRS (Group 2) and were performed by 2 experienced high-volume surgeons. Results: Between September 2018 and April 2019, 593 patients underwent PCNL and 239 patients had RIRS in two tertiary centers. Among them, 149 patients were included for the final analysis after propensity-score matching out of which 75 patients underwent SMP in one center and 74 patients underwent RIRS in the other. The stone-free rate (SFR) was statistically significantly higher in Group 1 on POD-1 (98.66% vs. 89.19%; p = 0.015), and was still higher in Group 1 on POD-30 (98.66% vs. 93.24%, p = 0.092) SFR on both POD-1 and POD-30 for lower pole calculi was higher in Group 1 (100 vs. 82.61%, p = 0.047 and 100 vs 92.61% p = 0.171). The mean (SD) operative time was significantly shorter in Group 1 at 36.43 min (14.07) vs 51.15 (17.95) mins (p < 0.0001). The mean hemoglobin drop was significantly less in Group 1 (0.31 vs 0.53 gm%; p = 0.020). There were more Clavien–Dindo complications in Group 2 (p = 0.021). The mean VAS pain score was significantly less in Group 2 at 6 and 12 h postoperatively (2.52 vs 3.67, 1.85 vs 2.40, respectively: p < 0.0001), whereas the mean VAS pain score was significantly less in Group 1 at 24 h postoperatively (0.31 vs 1.01, p < 0.0001). The mean hospital stay was significantly shorter in Group 1 (28.37 vs 45.70 h; p < 0.0001). Conclusion: SMP has significantly lower operative times, complication rates, shorter hospital stay, with higher stone-free rates compared to RIRS. SMP is associated with more early post-operative pain though.Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipa

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Rescue stitch: A minimal access surgeon's lifeboat in life-threatening intraoperative bleeding

Bleeding in a minimal access surgery can be very intimidating for a laparoscopic surgeon. Open conversion becomes an imminent option in these situations. Although open conversion is not a surgical defeat, in certain situations, bleeding can be salvaged using a ‘rescue stitch.’ We, herein, describe rescue stitch along with a rescue tray and its application during intraoperative bleeding in minimal access surgery

Bolster material granuloma masquerading as recurrent renal cell carcinoma following partial nephrectomy

Nephron sparing surgery has seen a phenomenal rise in its application over the past few decades. The use of Surgicel and gel foam for closure of defect created after partial nephrectomy has become a routine practice at many centers. In this case report, we describe radiological artifact secondary to a surgical bolster mimicking a residual disease or an early recurrence in the kidney. This case highlights two facts; first, reapproximation of the renal tissue is best done without the use of Surgicel bolsters. Second, bolsteroma should always be kept in mind as a differential diagnosis in a case where computed tomography (CT) imaging is showing early recurrence. If the surgeon is sure about the surgical margins being negative and the CT image shows a bolsteroma, the patient should be observed and a repeat scan should be done at 3–6 months, which would show regression or disappearance of the lesion proving it to be an artifact rather than malignant lesion

Migration of double J stent into the inferior vena cava and the right atrium

Migration of a ureteric double J stent down into the bladder or up into the kidney is a well known complication. We recently encountered a case where the stent migrated into the vascular system following attempted ureteroscopy for a lower ureteric calculus. The patient required open surgical exploration for stent retrieval