One-stage sigmoid resection and primary anastomosis can be performed safely in nearly 90% of all patients with perforated sigmoid diverticulitis (Hinchey III/IV) by surgeons of different training levels. Patients with immunosuppression, chronic renal failure, liver cirrhosis, or previous organ transplantation or complex cardiovascular reconstructive procedures have a significantly increased risk of dying after sigmoid resection for perforated diverticulitis.

Serum IL-6 and IL-10 may not be ideal measures for evaluation of the degree of tissue trauma in laparoscopic-assisted and open resections in Crohn's disease, probably because of interference with disease-specific cytokine interactions. In contrast, granulocyte elastase has to be considered a strong marker discriminating the different severity of surgical trauma induced by laparoscopic-assisted vs. open resection in Crohn's disease.

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Serological screening approaches have allowed for the identification of a large number of potentially relevant tumor antigens in cancer patients. Within this group, cancer testis antigens represent promising targets for cancer immunotherapy, since they are widely expressed in a variety of human cancer entities. In pancreatic cancer, however, there are only few data available about the expression pattern and serological response to cancer testis antigens and other serological-defined tumor antigens. Therefore, we investigated the IgG antibody response against 11 cancer testis antigens (SCP-1, GAGE, LAGE-1a,-1b, CT-7, NY-ESO-1, SSX-1-5) recombinantly expressed on yeast surface (RAYS) in patients with pancreatic cancer (n 5 96), chronic pancreatitis (n 5 18) and healthy donors (n 5 48). We found in 14% of all patients antibody responses to SCP-1, but not to other cancer testis antigens (GAGE, LAGE-1a,-1b, CT-7, NY-ESO-1, SSX-1-5). Antibody response correlated with the expression of SCP-1 in the primary tumor of the respective patient as shown by RT-PCR, immunohistochemistry and Western blot. In contrast, no serological response to cancer testis antigens was observed in healthy donors. The humoral immune response against SCP-1 was associated with the size of tumor, but not with other clinico-pathological parameters such as histology, stage, presence of lymph node metastases, grading, age, gender or gemcitabine treatment. In conclusion, antibody response to cancer testis antigen SCP-1 is found in a proportion of pancreatic carcinoma patients. These results indicate that identification of additional tumor antigens by serological screening of tumor cDNA expression libraries by RAYS is a promising goal in pancreatic cancer. ' 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

TEM resection of neoplasms located on the lateral rectal wall have a higher risk of bleeding. The learning curve for transanal endoscopic microsurgery appears to be negligible in surgeons with experience in minimal invasive surgery.