The Incidence of Breast Cancer in Northwest Iran (2003 -2008)

Introduction: Breast Cancer is the most common cancer in Iranian women and Iranian patients are relatively young. Given that Iran has a female population of about 38 million, this corresponds to a total number of 6000 new cases of breast cancer annually. This study aims to demonstrate the characteristics of breast cancers according to athologic records in East Azerbaijan province, Iran. Methods: In this retrospective cross-sectional study, 159314 pathology records of the main hospitals and pathology laboratories were observed for a period of 5 years. For each patient, sex, age, breast specimen pathology, pathological grading of malignant lesions and place of residence of patients were collected and statistically analyzed. Results: There were 12083 cancer cases; 902 of which were primary breast cancer. Breast cancer was the most common cancer in females (22.2%) but it ranks the 22nd in males. The annual incidence of breast cancer in women was 52.3 per 100,000. The mean age of women with breast cancer was 48.3±12.7 years (range, 16-85) and for male 54.0±13.6 years range, 23-76). The highest frequency of malignancies was observed in the 40-49 year old age groups (34.5%). Invasive ductal carcinoma was the most common histological type diagnosed in both sexes. Conclusion:In Iran, breast cancer affects women at least one decade younger than developed countries. In spite of the rare incidence of breast cancer in men, the descriptive epidemiology of this malignancy is urprisingly similar to that of women. A considerable proportion of cancers of our research were in breast which mandates a national cancer detection program encouraging women for breast self-examination and participation in screening tests to improve breast cancer care

Comparison Thoracic Epidural and Intercostal Block to Improve Ventilation Parameters and Reduce Pain in Patients with Multiple Rib Fractures

Introduction: Chest wall blunt trauma causes multiple rib fractures and will often be associated with significant pain and may compromise ventilator mechanics. Analgesia has great roll in rib fracture therapies, opioid are useful, but when used as sole agent may re-quire such high dose that they produce respiratory depression, especially in el-derly .the best analgesia for a severe chest wall injury is a continuous epidural infusion of local anesthetic. This provides complete analgesia allowing inspiration and coughing without of the risk of respiratory depression. Methods: sixty adult patients who with multiple rib fractures were enrolled in this study. They were divided into Group A or thoracic epidural with bupivacaine 0.125 % +1mg/5ml morphine and group B or inter-costal block with %0.25 bupivacaine. The patients were assessed through ICU and hos-pital stay length, ventilation function tests. Pain score among the patients was meas-ured with verbal rating scale, before and after administration of the analgesia. Results: We found a significant improvement in ventilatory function tests during the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd days after epidural analgesia compared with the intercostal block (P < 0.004). Changes in the visual Analogue Scale were associated with marked improvement re-garding pain at rest and pain caused by coughing and deep breathing in group A com-pared group B... ICU and hospital stay markedly reduced in Group A. Conclusion: tho-racic epidural analgesia is superior to intercostals block regarding pain relief of rib frac-tures. Patients who received epidural analgesia had significantly lower pain scores at all studied times