Patients exposed to a surgical safety checklist experience better postoperative outcomes, but this could simply reflect wider quality of care in hospitals where checklist use is routine.

No abstract

Background and aims: Positron emission tomography (PET) using 18 FLT PET scanning. Tracer uptake within lesions was quantified using standardised uptake values (SUVs). Histopathological examination and MIB-1 immunohistochemistry were performed on all lesions, and proliferation quantified by calculating a labelling index (% of MIB-1 positively stained nuclei within 1500 tumour cells). Results: Histology confirmed adenocarcinoma in 12 of 13 lesions; the remaining lesion was reactive. All eight extrahepatic lesions were visualised using both 18 FLT and 18 FDG. Three of the five resected liver metastases were also avid for 18 FLT and showed high proliferation, while the remaining two lesions which demonstrated no uptake of 18 FLT had correspondingly very low proliferation. There was a statistically significant positive correlation (r = 0.8, p,0.01) between SUVs of the tumours visualised with 18 FLT and the corresponding MIB-1 labelling indices. No such correlation was demonstrated with 18 FDG avid lesions (r = 0.4). Conclusions:18 FLT PET correlates with cellular proliferation markers in both primary and metastatic CRC. This technique could provide a mechanism for in vivo grading of malignancy and early prediction of response to adjuvant chemotherapy.

No abstract