Subcutaneous release of the tendon sheath has been performed in 210 trigger digits of 172 patients. The follow-up period ranged from 3 to 58 months, with an average of 24 months. Based on our points system, the overall results were as follows: excellent 64.3%, good 9.5% fair 8.1%, poor 18.1%. There were no infections, no injuries of nerves or vessels and no functional insufficiency. This subcutaneous procedure can be easily, quickly and safely performed by careful hand surgeons in the out-patient clinic.

Pneumothorax is a common disease worldwide, but surprisingly, its initial management remains controversial. There are some published guidelines for the management of spontaneous pneumothorax. However, they differ in some respects, particularly in initial management. In published trials, the objective of treatment has not been clarified and it is not possible to compare the treatment strategies between different trials because of inappropriate evaluations of the air leak. Therefore, there is a need to outline the optimal management strategy for pneumothorax. In this report, we systematically review published randomized controlled trials of the different treatments of primary spontaneous pneumothorax, point out controversial issues and finally propose a three-step strategy for the management of pneumothorax. There are three important characteristics of pneumothorax: potentially lethal respiratory dysfunction; air leak, which is the obvious cause of the disease; frequent recurrence. These three characteristics correspond to the three steps. The central idea of the strategy is that the lung should not be expanded rapidly, unless absolutely necessary. The primary objective of both simple aspiration and chest drainage should be the recovery of acute respiratory dysfunction or the avoidance of respiratory dysfunction and subsequent complications. We believe that this management strategy is simple and clinically relevant and not dependent on the classification of pneumothorax.

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A 67-year-old male developed primary gastric squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) 13 years after undergoing distal gastrectomy for gastric cancer. Gastroscopy revealed a type 2 gastric remnant tumor and tumor biopsies revealed poorly differentiated carcinoma. The patient underwent remnant gastrectomy with lateral segment hepatectomy, splenectomy, partial resection of diaphragm, and distal partial esophagectomy. The histological findings revealed SCC without an adenocarcinoma component in the gastric remnant tumor. The patient died 13 months after surgery due to multiple-organ metastasis of gastric SCC. The post-operative prognosis of gastric SCC cases tends to poorer than that of gastric adenocarcinoma. Early diagnosis is important to improve the prognosis of primary gastric SCC and pathogenetic analysis of gastric SCC may contribute to improving the diagnosis and treatment of carcinogenesis and the prognosis of gastric SCC.