Search

Data from 62 schizophrenic patients (DSM III), aged 18 to 30, who were treated in the public medical system, and showed a relapse in 1987, after an one-year-follow up, were analyzed. It was observed that cannabis and alcohol use increased the probability of a relapse of schizophrenia in the follow-up period, whilst moderate alcohol use (less than 70 cc of pure alcohol/day) had no influence in the probability of relapse.

High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) demonstrated advantages over conventional procedures employed in newborn and adult hemoglobinopathy screening programs for the identification of Hb variants has promoted the need to reassess our knowledge of hemoglobin reference ranges as it relates to HPLC quantitation. In this study, the HPLC hemoglobin reference ranges derived from 200 normal African American adults are expressed as follows: Hb A mean 93.6 percent (s.d. 1.3, ranges 89.8 to 95.2), Hb A1 mean 2.0 percent (s.d. 0.6, ranges 0.8 to 5.2), Hb F mean 3.2 percent (s.d. 0.7, ranges 1.7 to 5.3) and Hb A2 mean 1.2 percent (s.d. 0.4, ranges 0.5 to 3.4); while the HPLC results for normal newborns and babies (n = 99) in the African American population fluctuates from Hb F mean 82.0 percent (s.d. 7.7, range 66.6 to 89.9) and Hb A mean 19.0 percent (s.d. 7.7, ranges 10.1 to 33.4) at 4 days to a mean of 15. percent (s.d. 4.8, range 9.3 to 22.8) for Hb F and a mean of 85.0 percent (s.d. 5.1, ranges 76.4 to 90.7) for Hb A at 300 days after birth. In case of the most common hemoglobin variants for this population, it has been shown that the A/S and A/C ratios for adults (Hb AS, Hb AC) and newborns (Hb FAS, and FAC) remained within the 1.5 (range 1.0 to 2.2) limits regardless of age group. Application of these HPLC ranges to confront other abnormalities will prove most useful during blood screening processes.

Congenital polycystic dilatation of the intrahepatic biliary ways (Caroli's disease) is a rare disease. The "pure" type and the one associated with congenital hepatic fibrosis are accepted. Although the current exploration methods, its diagnosis is rare before the surgical procedure. Treatment of the diffuse pure types and the ones associated with hepatic fibrosis is difficult and the outcome is bad. A case of the less frequent type is communicated, in which, as a novelty, intrasurgical echography was used in its treatment.

Endometriosis of the Digestive Tract is an uncommon pathology, especially when ileocecal appendix is involved. Authors report twelve cases of appendiceal endometriosis reviewed from surgical and anatomopathological records. The preoperative diagnosis is almost impossible. The most usual clinical presentation is compatible with that of acute or chronic appendicitis. The definitive diagnosis is confirmed by anatomopathological study of the surgical specimen. The Surgical treatment consists of appendicectomy alone or associated with extirpation of other concomitant neighbouring lesions.

We present the experience with the use of intraoperative ultrasonography in detecting biliary calculi on 55 patients, 19 of which had lithiasis of the common bile duct. Operative ultrasonics imaging of the biliary tree and operative cholangiography had a similar accuracy when both explorations were performed. In this series, accuracy indexes of ultrasonography in diagnosing choledocholithiasis were: sensitivity, 84.21%; specificity, 100%; efficiency, 94%; predictability of a positive test, 100%; predictability of a negative test, 92%. We think ultrasonography is a better exploration in two conditions: when intrahepatic duct lithiasis exists and if calculi are at the end of choledochus, because differentiation with neoplastic changes is easier.

Report of two cases of eosinophilic gastroenteritis. In both cases the presentation was an acute abdomen syndrome. The etiological diagnosis was postoperative, because in the preoperative period there were no data characteristic of this entity. Probably this disease is more frequent than reported and although the treatment is medical, there are some cases in which surgery is justified.

A case is presented of mesenteric venous thrombosis which affects about 30 cm of small intestine in a patient operated one month before for portal hypertension and bleeding from esophagogastric varices, in which an interruption of the portal-azygous venous circulation was made with splenectomy, using the Romero-Torres procedure. We consider that postsplenectomy thrombocytosis has been the first pathogenic factor in the mesenteric venous thrombosis.