The general incidence of difficult laryngoscopy in pediatric anesthesia is lower than in adults. Our results show that the risk of difficult laryngoscopy is much higher in patients below 1 year of age, in underweight patients and in ASA III and IV patients. The underlying disease might also contribute to the risk. If the Mallampati score could be obtained, prediction of difficult laryngoscopy seems to be reliable. Our data support the existing recommendations for a specialized anesthesiological team to provide safe anesthesia for infants and neonates.

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Purpose: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) accounts for 2% to 3% of all malignancies. It represents one of the most radiation-and chemotherapy-resistant tumors and surgical resections are only effective in organ-defined disease. However, RCC is an immunogenic tumor with response rates to immunotherapies between10% and 20% of the treated patients. Due to the currently inefficient therapies and the low 5-year survival rates of RCC patients, novel diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic markers are urgently needed for this disease. Experimental Design: Proteome-based approaches were used to identify (a) differentially expressed proteins in RCC compared with normal kidney epithelium and (b) proteins that are able to induce an antibody response in RCC patients. Based on these experiments, a promising candidate was subsequently validated by reverse transcription-PCR,Western blot analyses, and immunohistochemistry. In addition, functional assays were done in generated transfectants. Results: The ubiquitin COOH-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCHL1) was found to be differentially expressed in both RCC lesions and RCC cell lines and immunoreactive using patients'sera. UCHL1 expression was often down-regulated in primary RCC when compared with normal kidney epithelium but dependent on the RCC subtype, the von Hippel-Lindau phenotype, and the tumor grading. Moreover, the frequency and the level of UCHL1 expression were higher in metastases when compared with primary RCC lesions. Gain-of-function transfectants exhibited a significant higher proliferation and migration rate than UCHL1-negative RCC cells. Conclusions: UCHL1expression seems to be associated with the metastatic phenotype of RCC and therefore might serve as potential biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of RCC patients.

The results indicate that the risk for difficult airway situations might substantially differ between surgical patient groups. In hospitals with departmental structures and spatially separated operating rooms, the deduction might be increased awareness and particular structural preparation for difficult airway situations in the respective subspecialties.