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Biomedical subjects

A Mercurella

Publications and source records attributed to A Mercurella.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

Neuropathic urinary incontinence in pediatric patients: management with artificial sphincter.

From June 1982 to November 1990, 37 patients, aged 13 to 19 years (35 males and 2 females), were treated in our division for neuropathic urinary incontinence with an artificial sphincter. All patients were treated before sphincter implantation with drugs, transurethral sphincterotomy in boys, and bladder flap urethroplasty was carried out in females during the surgical procedure. The cuff was placed at the bladder neck in 33 cases, and in 4 cases at the urethral bulb. The sphincter was activated about 3 weeks after implantation and after 2 months in two patients with associated bladder augmentation. Operative and perioperative complications occurred in four cases during the initial phase of our experience. Later we had to perform 19 revisions on 14 patients due to mechanical and surgical failure (reoperation rate, 0.38). Thirty-three patients are presently dry (90% of successes). Postoperatively, normal upper urinary tract conditions were found in all patients except two.

Adolescent

[Renovascular hypertension in childhood].

One to two per cent of children and up to 11% of adolescent have arterial hypertension. In most cases children and adolescent are not recognized to be hypertensive because physicians do not routinely measure blood pressure. Often the diagnosis is recognized only when the pediatric patients develop a complication: seizure, stroke, heart failure or paraplegia. Renovascular hypertension in children and adolescents is more common than all of the other causes combined, except for coarctation of the aorta. The diagnosis is not so easy and includes the usual history, physical examination (signs and symptoms of coarctation of the isthmic or abdominal aorta or of an abdominal mass or of one of the adrenal causes of hypertension), laboratory studies, abdominal ultrasound study and chest x-ray. Sometime a CAT can be usefull. The next steps are the early and rapid-sequence IVP, renal angiography and peripheral and renal renin activity. The management of renovascular hypertension in children and adolescent includes a conservative approach (percutaneous transluminal renal angioplasty or renal embolization), rarely used in pediatric age, and the surgical treatment. This latter includes all the surgical procedures of renal revascularization and, in unilateral renal parenchymal diseases, the nephrectomy or a partial nephrectomy. The postoperative results are very good in a high percentage of cases. In bilateral cases, the revascularization surgical procedures improve or normalize also the impaired renal function.

Angioplasty, Balloon

[Primary intestinal lymphangiectasis. A case treated surgically].

The authors describe a rare case of primary intestinal lymphangiectasis resolved with surgical treatment. Usually the natural course of the disease is relatively mild and medical nutritional treatment can be sufficient. In this case the lymphatic intestinal anomaly was generalized to the entire small intestine but a distal ileal segment was particularly involved. The surgical resection of this intestinal tract resolved the symptomatology.

Age Factors

[Ectopic ureter].

Ectopic ureter is quite a rare malformation, and it can be more or less serious depending on its anatomy (monolateral or bilateral ectopy, duplicated ureter, single ureter) and the associated malformations. It's more common in female patients. Ectopic ureteral orifice can be either intravesical (bladder neck) or, more often, extravesical. Ectopia in women is more frequently found in the urethra and the vaginal vestibule; much less frequently in vagina and in uterus. In men it is mostly found in the posterior urethra; in the male genital tract is very rare. In most cases ectopic ureter is associated with pyelo-ureteral complete duplication: the upper kidney usually works badly or doesn't work at all, due to renal dysplasia or pyelonephritis. More rarely ureteral ectopia affects a single urinary system and can be monolateral or, in the most serious forms, bilateral. The main clinical signs are urinary incontinence accompanied by regular micturition (more exactly pseudoincontinence) in the female patients, and urinary infection. In the male there is no urinary incontinence. Authors report their experience about 54 ectopic ureters in 51 children. Treatment is always by surgery: the choice has to be made between conservative or radical attitude. 38 total exeresis of the ectopic excretory pathway (upper heminephroureterectomy or nephroureterectomy), 9 ureteral reimplantations, 1 uretero-pyeloanastomosis have been done. Outcome is always satisfactory in monolateral forms, more uncertain in bilateral forms with single ectopic ureter, due to incontinence and reduced bladder capacity problems and the possible associated renal failure.

Female

[Care of the newborn infant with respiratory distress syndrome using continuous negative pressure. 5 years' experience].

Continuous Negative Pressure (CNP) was utilized as sole form of respiratory assistance in the treatment of 40 newborn infants with Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS). The average duration of CNP therapy was less than 7 days in all cases. 38 of these infants survived without sequelae (95%); an infant developed severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia (2.5%); another infant died from intracranial hemorrhage (2.5%). CNP appears to be an effective respiratory support in the treatment of neonatal RDS, when used early in spontaneously breathing infants weighing greater than 1500 grams.

Bronchial Diseases

[Surgery of malformations of extrahepatic bile ducts in childhood].

The actual hypothesis on the etiology and pathogenesis of neonatal hepatitis, intrahepatic and extrahepatic biliary atresia and choledocal cyst is that these disorders can be different results or permissible outcomes of a single basic process: infantile obstructive cholangiopathy. This hypothesis can explain the failure of many infants with operable extrahepatic biliary atresia to do well following surgically successful anastomosis. Very possibly no surgical mode of therapy will cure a significant fraction of infants with biliary atresia (correctable and non-correctable types) because the basic disease process actually produces portal fibrosis and destroys intrahepatic bile ducts as well. However, since the obliterative process can resolve, even if not usually completely, surgical procedures of conventional or of hepatic-portoenterostomy type should be considered for all infants who are found to have biliary atresia. Probably biliary atresia is more in need of preventive or prophylactic measures than of new surgical procedures.

Adolescent