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Primary urachal carcinomas are very rare urological malignancies. In the present article we report an unusual case of a small cell carcinoma with neurendocrine features and adenocarcinoma arising in the urachus, and review the literature. The results of the immunohistochemical studies are presented.

A technique to measure the pH on the surface of rectal mucosa of humans and dogs is described.

Forty-seven cases of urinary calculi were seen, in children from the Western Galilee region, in the last thirteen years. This disease was found in very high frequency in Oriental Jewish children, as well as in Arab children ( 0.29 1,000 and 0.26 1,000 , respectively), and is rare in Jewish children of Ashkenazic European origin ( 0.04 1,000 ). These facts were known from previous studies. The striking finding in this survey was the high family incidence of urinary calculi. In 21 of 47 cases from this series one or more family members (up to second cousins) were affected by the same disease. The etiology of “idiopathic” urinary calculi in cases in which no metabolic defect is found was never clearly established. This study suggests that hereditary factors have great importance in a population with a high incidence of this disease.

IN A SURVEY of patients with diaphragmatic hernia who were operated on, through an abdominal approach, in the Hadassah University Hospital between 1961 and 1965, we noticed a significant incidence of postoperative wound dehiscence. On the assumption that this was the result of increased intra-abdominal pressure following the reposition of the herniated organs into the abdominal cavity, we decided to compare the frequency of wound dehiscence in these patients and in a control group with similar upper abdominal incisions for other conditions. Material and Methods Forty-four patients with sliding hiatus hernias and two with paraesophageal hernias, all of whom were operated on through an upper midline abdominal incision, were compared with 115 randomly selected patients operated on during the years 1963 and 1964, on whom similar incisions and closure methods were used for a variety of upper gastrointestinal conditions (Table 1). None of these patients had evidence of malignant disease.