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ABSTRACT Objective. To correlate placental histopathology, in particular ischemic changes, with the clinical severity of preeclampsia. Design. A blinded retrospective study. Setting. One Swedish hospital. Sample. One hundred and fifty-seven women with severe ( n= 116) or mild ( n= 41) preeclampsia and 157 normotensive women matched according to gestational-age. Methods: One senior pathologist, blinded to clinical data and group, examined all histological slides. In the statistical analyses, adjustment for gestational week was done when appropriate. Main outcome measures. Placental histopathological findings. Results: Amount of infarction increased with the severity of preeclampsia ( p < 0.001). Infarction involving ≥5% of the placental tissue was seen in 39.7% of severe preeclampsia, 17.1% of mild preeclampsia and 5.1% of non-preeclampsia. When comparing placentas in severe preeclampsia, mild preeclampsia and non-preeclampsia, there was an increase in the presence of any infarction (80.2%, 61.0%, vs. 20.4%). Also, there was a difference in the presence of decidual arteriopathy (35.3%, 22.0%, vs. 3.8%) and accelerated villous maturation (71.6%, 53.3%, vs. 12.6%). We found no difference in intervillous thrombosis, abruption placenta or placental weight in relation to gestational week. Conclusions. In pregnancies with mild or severe preeclampsia, a large proportion of the placentas had histological signs of pathology, in particular signs of ischemia. The pathology was similar, but more pronounced in severe compared to mild preeclampsia, suggesting mild and severe preeclampsia to have similar underlying etiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-hospital observation with repeated clinical examinations is commonly used in patients with an equivocal diagnosis of appendicitis. It is not known if repeated measurements of temperature and laboratory examinations have any diagnostic importance in this situation. The importance of repeated measurements of the body temperature, white blood cell (WBC) and differential cell counts, C-reactive protein concentration (CRP) and of the surgeon's repeated assessments was prospectively analyzed in 420 patients with an equivocal diagnosis of appendicitis at admission who were reexamined after a median of 6 hours of observation. The final diagnosis was appendicitis in 137 patients. After observation the inflammatory response was increasing among patients with appendicitis and decreasing among patients without appendicitis. The variables discriminating power for appendicitis consequently increased, from an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.56 to 0.77 at admission, to 0.75 to 0.85 after observation. The ROC area of the surgeons' clinical assessment increased from 0.69 to 0.89. The WBC and differential cell counts were the best discriminators at the repeat examination. The change in the variables between the observations had weak discriminating power and had no additional importance in addition to the actual level at the repeat examination. To conclude, the diagnostic information of the temperature and laboratory examinations increased after observation. Repeated controls of the body temperature and laboratory examinations are therefore useful in the management of patients with equivocal signs of appendicitis, but the result of the examinations must be integrated with the clinical assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]