Interventional radiology in the management of post-partum hemorrhage

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Inflammatory markers as prognostic factors of survival in patients affected by hepatocellular carcinoma undergoing transarterial chemoembolization

Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is a good choice for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment when surgery and liver transplantation are not feasible. Few studies reported the value of prognostic factors influencing survival after chemoembolization. In this study, we evaluated whether preoperative inflammatory factors such as neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio and platelet to lymphocyte ratio affected our patient survival when affected by hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods. We retrospectively evaluated a total of 72 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma that underwent TACE. We enrolled patients with different etiopathogeneses of hepatitis and histologically proven HCC not suitable for surgery. The overall study population was dichotomized in two groups according to the median NLR value and was analyzed also according to other prognostic factors. Results. The global median overall survival (OS) was 28 months. The OS in patients with high NLR was statistically significantly shorter than that in patients with low NLR. The following pretreatment variables were significantly associated with the OS in univariate analyses: age, Child-Pugh score, BCLC stage, INR, and NLR. Pretreated high NLR was an independently unfavorable factor for OS. Conclusion. NLR could be considered a good prognostic factor of survival useful to stratify patients that could benefit from TACE treatment

Pancreatic ablation : minimally invasive treatment options

Despite the significant improvement of knowledge and technologies in tumor treatments, pancreatic tumor remains a complex disease still characterized by a poor prognosis. The increasing role of minimally invasive techniques started to drive the effort of scientific medicine to evaluate the possibilities of application of these techniques to pancreatic cancer. The purpose of this paper is to present a brief summary of the different ablative techniques available and proposed for pancreatic tumor treatment considering invasive, noninvasive, thermal and non-thermal techniques

Contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) in blunt abdominal trauma.

In the assessment of polytrauma patient, an accurate diagnostic study protocol with high sensitivity and specificity is necessary. Computed Tomography (CT) is the standard reference in the emergency for evaluating the patients with abdominal trauma. Ultrasonography (US) has a high sensitivity in detecting free fluid in the peritoneum, but it does not show as much sensitivity for traumatic parenchymal lesions. The use of Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS) improves the accuracy of the method in the diagnosis and assessment of the extent of parenchymal lesions. Although the CEUS is not feasible as a method of first level in the diagnosis and management of the polytrauma patient, it can be used in the follow-up of traumatic injuries of abdominal parenchymal organs (liver, spleen and kidneys), especially in young people or children

Analysis of model implied volatility for jump diffusion models: Empirical evidence from the Nordpool market

In this paper we examine the importance of mean reversion and spikes in the stochastic behaviour of the underlying asset when pricing options on power. We propose a model that is flexible in its formulation and captures the stylized features of power prices in a parsimonious way. The main feature of the model is that it incorporates two different speeds of mean reversion to capture the differences in price behaviour between normal and spiky periods. We derive semi-closed form solutions for European option prices using transform analysis and then examine the properties of the implied volatilities that the model generates. We find that the presence of jumps generates prominent volatility skews which depend on the sign of the mean jump size. We also show that mean reversion reduces the volatility smile as time to maturity increases. In addition, mean reversion induces volatility skews particularly for ITM options, even in the absence of jumps. Finally, jump size volatility and jump intensity mainly affect the kurtosis and thus the curvature of the smile with the former having a more important role in making the volatility smile more pronounced and thus increasing the kurtosis of the underlying price distribution