The new Coronavirus infection, which was first seen in China in late December 2019 and eventually became a worldwide pandemic, poses a serious threat to public health. After a high spike in the number of new COVID-19 infection cases following increase in overall daily death toll in Turkey, Turkish Ministry of Health has taken immediate precautions to postpone elective surgeries in order to reduce the burden to the healthcare system which might be challenged. Whereas different areas of medicine were able to suspend their operative procedures during this period, this was not completely possible in pediatric cardiovascular surgery due to the severity and urgency of congenital heart disease patients requiring operation. Based on the guideline that was published by the Turkish Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery Association, in which the patients requiring surgical intervention during the Covid-19 pandemic period are ranked according to the priority, directions were given regarding the operations that hereby, be delayed, we report our experience in 29 cases retrospectively, regarding the preoperative evaluation of these patients, makings of an emergency operation decision, and strategies taken about intraoperative and postoperative management and arrangements during the pandemic period. In this article, we present crucial precautions that was applied in pediatric cardiovascular surgery and extensive list of cases in order to deliver highest level of the patient safety and protection for the surgical team.
We report the case of a 38-year-old female patient with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Jaccoud arthritis (JA) that sequentially developed digital ischemic lesions of the hands. In spite of follow-up treatment with glucocorticoids, immunosuppressant, antiaggregant, and potent vasodilatator agents, a serious progression to digital gangrene over a one-month period was observed. Surprisingly, her nonhealing digital lesions improved after two cycles of rituximab (RTX) administration.
e11537 Background: In a few number of studies a possible relationship between inflammatory markers and the prognosis, chemotherapy response and survival in breast cancer has been reported. The aim of this study is to point out the place of serum markers as a prognostic factor in early stage breast cancer. Methods: This study was conducted in Hacettepe University Cancer Institute. Patients operated and stage IA to III C for breast cancer between December 2009 and June 2012 were included the study. Before the any adjuvant therapy inflammation markers were studied. Results: A total of 704 patients were included in the study. The median age of the patients was 50 (25-92). 42,8% of the patients were premenopausal and 48,2% postmenopausal. The median follow up period for the whole study group was 22 months (3-287). We studied the CRP, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, B2 microglobulin, LDH, albumin, and ferritin studied and values for each marker were grouped as high and normal. There was no statistically significant difference in disease free survival and overall survival for each marker who had high and normal levels. Conclusions: We did not found any inflammatory markers as a prognostic value. However our follow up time is short and we should be wait for more mature data.
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