Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to G Zatta.
A case of left atrial myxoma shown on an equilibrium radionuclide ventriculography is presented. A peculiar abnormality of the Fourier phase image appears more reliable than the other findings previously revealed by first-pass or equilibrium studies. The findings were perfectly consistent with the gross anatomy of the tumour.
Six characteristic initial clinical neurological patterns were defined and their incidence was determined in one year caselist of patients hospitalized in the Neurology Department of the General Hospital of Saronno. Since the predictive value of a diagnostic procedure depends not only on sensitivity and specificity but also on the prevalence of disease in the population sampled, the prevalence of surgical brain lesions was evaluated retrospectively in this caselist for each of the clinical patterns previously defined, in order to evaluate the predictive value of serial brain scintigraphy and of brain computerized tomography. In this caselist the most frequent clinical patterns (stroke, skull trauma) show a low prevalence of surgical lesions, unlike it happens in the Neurosurgery Department of another hospital chosen as reference. It follows that in the sample of population constituted by the patients hospitalized for "stroke" in the Neurology Department of this hospital the Bayes' theorem yields a predictive value of brain scintigraphy not significantly inferior in respect of computerized brain tomography. In addition a review of the positive scans of patients with cerebral infarction has shown the possibility of a correct diagnosis in 95%. Therefore the serial scintigraphy is thought to keep a high value as a screening tool in this kind of patients where, after a simple clinical selection, the prevalence of brain lesions needing of surgery is low.
99mTc-mercaptoacetyltriglycine (MAG3) has been proposed as an alternative to 131I-orthoiodohippurate (OIH) for the scintigraphic determination of effective renal plasma flow (ERPF). The purpose of this study was to compare the ERPF values determined simultaneously with MAG3 and OIH by a dual channel technique in a large group of subjects with widely ranging renal function. During the last two years, we administered a simultaneous injection of 74 MBq of MAG3 and 0.74 MBq of OIH to each subject who underwent a renal scintigraphic study in our hospital. They were 53 females and 50 males (mean age: 52 years; range: 18-70 years), either normal (30) or with a diagnosis of essential hypertension (53), chronic renal failure (14), renal calculi (5), or renal transplant (1). Plasma clearance and ERPF were calculated with both radiocompounds by using the exponential formula of Tauxe and coworkers and a single plasma concentration determination sampled 44 min after injection of the two tracers. The time-activity curves for kidney and blood were of the same bi-exponential type. The mean ratio between the two plasma clearances was 0.49. The linear regression of the ERPF values obtained with the two radiocompounds was highly significant (r = 0.69; p less than 0.0001) and is expressed by the equation: ERPF (MAG3) = 0.453 ERPF (OIH) + 25.7. These data suggest that the routine calculation of ERPF from MAG3 clearance is consistent with the results obtained from OIH clearance. In conclusion, MAG3 appears to be a good predictor of ERPF in routine clinical practice.
RIA dosages of specific IgE antibodies to cow milk, alpha-lactalbumin, beta-lactoglobulin, casein, cheddar and mould cheese were determined in 440 patients. Statistic analysis has been carried out with: 1) the linear regression and correlation coefficient r2: 2) U test of Mann-Whitney and then S test of Kendall Results show that casein has low allergenicity in comparison to other cow's milk proteins. It could be unnecessary to quantify specific IgE to cow milk and cheeses. From the observed data we could suppose that the formulas with casein/blood protein ratio similar to maternal milk may be more allergenic than casein based ones.
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Single photon emission computerized tomography using a rotating gamma camera needs accurate calibration of electromechanical components, detection system and reconstruction software. A complete group of quality control procedures, developed on the basis of experience and experimental data acquired using a series of widely used gamma camera SPECT systems is presented. The procedures are divided into controls related to the rotational movement. of the detector and controls on the principal physical parameters characterizing a tomographic image. All quality controls here presented were performed with commercial phantoms.
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