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In colorectal cancer staging, pathologic lymph node analysis is a crucial information for the clinician and must be performed with a maximal level of accuracy. Therefore, the surgical sample analysis needs harvesting of as many lymph nodes as possible from the mesentery. In this study, we analysed the influence of a series of clinical and pathological factors which could influence lymph node harvesting. A total of 239 patients were included in our study. The factors with a statistically significant influence on lymph node collection (pinferior to0.05) were the age, gender of the patient, size of the primitive neoplasm, size of the surgical specimen, expertise of the surgeon and the pathology department. The presence of a radiochimiotherapy did not have any influence on the lymph node collection. This study highlights the importance of lymph node harvesting in colorectal surgical specimens of colo-rectal cancers.

Several studies have shown that patients often receive inadequate treatment of postoperative pain. The aim of the present descriptive study was to examine and analyze various data related to the postoperative pain assessment of 40 patients who underwent elective surgery. Pain journals were to be completed by patients during every waking hour for the first three postoperative days to assess both pain intensity and pain unpleasantness. A post hoc analysis of patient records permitted verification of pain assessment by nurses for each patient. The results showed that not only was postoperative pain rarely assessed using a valid scale, it was also poorly documented. In addition, when nurses assessed and documented postoperative pain using a numerical scale, their results were very different from patients' assessments. For the first postoperative day, the mean (± SD) pain intensity documented by nurses on a 0 to 10 numerical scale was 1.57±0.23, while the mean pain intensity noted by patients using the same scale was 3.82±0.41. Statistical analysis showed that there was no significant correlation between mean pain intensity documented by nurses and the mean pain intensity noted by patients.

Application of various methods of classification to a group of 70 cases of ventricular septal defect with high pulmonary artery hypertension allowed a comparative study between the various methods aiming at distinguishing the forms with low from high pulmonary artery resistance. The reference clinical classification provides supplementary informations derived from the natural or post-operative course and eventually from the microscopic examination. The first automatic classification relies on the study of a single criterion: the pulmonary arteriolar resistance and the systemic resistance ratio. A second classification is based on the attribution of points to some clinical or haemodynamic signs resulting in a score orienting the classification of every individual. Multifactorial analysis methods deal with all the available informations for the overall group, and suppose the use of a computer. The informatic methods make it possible to study the classifying value of every sign. Correlations were established between these various techniques and the medical classification.