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From September 1983 to December 1985 40 patients from a total of 55 with periampullary and pancreatic head carcinoma underwent resectional surgery in our department. Following a policy of precise evaluation of each patient's operative findings, six patients underwent a Whipple duodenopancreatectomy, 29 patients underwent regional subtotal pancreatectomy, and five underwent regional total pancreatectomy. Five patients underwent vascular reconstruction of their regional vascular structures after transection of the invaded segments of their vessels and eight had positive lymph nodes. Lymph node involvement was confined to the regional area. Patients with distant lymph node involvement (paraaortic) were not considered eligible to resection. Three patients died and 10 required reoperation. Thirty-one had radical resection, one palliative and eight equivocal resection. From the survived patients (n = 37) 33 are alive and doing well at the time of this report (overall mean survival 18 months). The results of this study demonstrate that a radical approach based on a precise evaluation of operative findings of the individual patient might well offer a higher resectability rate and is probably the only chance for radical resection and for a longer survival in patients with periampullary and pancreatic head carcinoma.

The mode and extent of the regressions of heart valves, valvular rings, and tendon chords, as well as the size of atria and ventricles in 316 hearts of different age groups (macroscopically normal at autopsy), were studied. With increasing age, the valves showed marked thickening and loss of elasticity. Deposition of lipoids and calcification occur to a variable extent in the valvular tissue and rings; Valve size shows a change of minor degree, but tendon chords and papillary muscles shorten in old age. The diameters of the atria, mitral, tricuspid, pulmonary, and aortic rings increase continuously up to the 9th decade of life. The width and length of the ventricles show minor alterations in size. In old age, heart weight increases.

Mutation induction was investigated in wild-type haploid yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae after split-dose UV-irradiation. Cells were exposed to fractionated 254 nm-UV-doses separated by intervals from 0 to 6 h with incubation either on non-nutrient or nutrient agar between. The test parameter was resistance to canavanine. If modifications of sensitivity due to incubation are appropriately taken into account there is no change of mutation frequency.