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The objective of this study was to determine the incidence and interobserver agreement of individual CT findings as well as the bowel injury prediction score (BIPS) in surgically proven bowel injury after blunt abdominal trauma. This HIPAA-compliant retrospective study was IRB approved and consent was waived. All patients 14 years or older who sustained surgically proven bowel injury after blunt abdominal trauma between 1/1/2004 and 6/30/2015 were included. Admission trauma MDCT scans were independently interpreted by two abdominal fellowship-trained radiologists who recorded the following CT findings: intraperitoneal fluid, mesenteric hematoma/fat stranding, bowel wall thickening/hematoma, active intravenous contrast extravasation, free intraperitoneal air, bowel wall discontinuity, and focal bowel hypoenhancement. Subsequently, the electronic medical records of the included patients, admission abdominal physical exam results, admission white blood cell count, and findings at exploratory laparotomy of the included patients were recorded. Thirty-three patients met the inclusion criteria. The incidence and interobserver agreement of the CT findings were as follows: intraperitoneal fluid 93.9 %, kappa = 0.784 (good); mesenteric hematoma/fat stranding 84.8 %, kappa = 0.718 (good); bowel wall thickening/hematoma 42.4 %, kappa = 0.491 (moderate); active IV contrast extravasation 36.3 %, kappa = 1.00 (perfect); free intraperitoneal air 21.2 %, kappa = 0.904 (very good), bowel wall discontinuity 6.1 %, kappa = 1.00 (perfect); and focal bowel hypoenhancement 6.1 %, kappa = 0.468 (moderate). An absence of the specified CT findings was encountered in 9.1 % with surgically proven bowel injuries (kappa = 1.00, perfect). In our study, 9/16 patients or 56.3 % had a bowel injury prediction score (BIPS) of 2 or more as defined by McNutt et al. (J Trauma Acute Care Surg 78(1):105-111, 2014). The presence of intraperitoneal fluid and mesenteric hematoma/fat stranding are the most common CT findings in bowel injuries proven at laparotomy. A small percentage of patients have no abnormal CT findings. This grading system did not prove to be useful in our study likely due to our inherently small patient population; however, the use of BIPS deserves further investigation as it may help in identifying blunt bowel and mesenteric injury patients with often subtle or nonspecific CT findings.

Background Multiple myeloma (MM) is a haematological malignancy associated with kidney injury resulting from cast nephropathy, which can be caused by monoclonal free light chains (FLC). It has been demonstrated that reduction of FLC can lead to a higher proportion of patients recovering renal function with a better outcome, especially if extended high cut-off haemodialysis (HCO-HD) combined with chemotherapy is used. Patients and Methods In this study, four cases of MM nephropathy were treated with HCO-HD and chemotherapy at a single institution during the period from August 2009 to August 2011. All of the patients presented with acute renal failure and high serum FLC. All patients underwent a bone marrow biopsy to confirm the diagnosis of MM, according to the WHO criteria. Three patients had de-novo MM and one patient had relapsed light chain myeloma disease. All patients underwent HCO-HD concomitantly with specific myeloma therapy once the diagnosis or relapse of MM was established. Results After a median follow up of 26 months, (range, 13-36) our data showed that all patients had a significant decrease in serum FLC through HCO-HD, proving the effectiveness of HCO-HD in managing MM. De-novo MM patients restored their renal function and achieved low-level FLC early on the treatment and become dialysis-independent. One patient with relapsed myeloma remained dialysis dependant. Conclusion Our study suggests that if myeloma nephropathy associated with light-chain disease, HCO-HD should be initiated as early as possible. At the same time a specific MM treatment should be initiated to gain control of the disease and salvage the kidneys in order to achieve dialysis-independency. Further trials to confirm our results are warranted. Key Words: Multiple myeloma, renal failure, High cut-off haemodialysis, chemotherapy, outcome.