Drs. Ahrendt and Pitt should be congratulated on a comprehensive and well-presented review of the surgical management of pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately, pancreatic cancer continues to be a major cause of cancer-related death. The majority (80%) of patients still present with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic disease. Preoperative Imaging Modalities and Laparoscopy In the 1980s, seve...

Modern imaging of pancreatic cancer remains a daily challenge both for detection and staging. Helical CT scanning, MRI, and more recently endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) all contribute. Demonstration of local vascular anatomy for assessing resectability is increasingly performed by non-invasive methods such as CT and MR angiography avoiding the need for traditional catheter angiograms. While a vari...

Two hundred and fifty three patients were retrospectively assigned to eight different staging systems proposed for neuroblastomas, and the prognostic value of each staging system was evaluated individually. The ability of each system to predict prognosis was compared with the others and the system proposed by Evans et al found to be the best predictor, even better than the recently proposed Tum...

Gastric carcinoma, the commonest cause of death from malignant disease in Trinidad, has decreased steadily over the period 1968-1977. Of the 1052 deaths during this time, females accounted for a relatively high percentage (45%) of cases. There is a predominance of antral tumors, and most cases present with very advanced disease (88% with Stage III & IV). This results in a low resectability rate...

The overall survival for carcinoma pancreas is still around 5%. Surgical resection alone is associated with a low survival and high recurrence rates. Neoadjuvant therapy for carcinoma pancreas is aimed at improving survival and resectability by downsizing borderline resectable and unresectable tumors. However its role in the resectable group of patients is still not clear. This review discussed...

The number of elderly patients who are developing carcinoma of the bronchus and who are also fit for surgical treatment is increasing. One hundred patients are reviewed who had operations for this condition. The histological distribution of growths in this age group is the same as in younger patients, and the rate of growth can be just as rapid. The importance of a high resectability rate and a...

Neoplasms of the biliary tract tree are uncommon and have a poor overall prognosis. Although numerous risk factors have been identified, little is known about the pathogenesis of these tumors, and no effective screening technique is available for early detection. Surgery remains the principal treatment modality and the only potential cure, with laparoscopy playing an increasingly important role...

We report the case of a 77-year-old woman presenting with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, which was then interpreted as an acute, life-threatening critical airway compression by a huge mediastinal tumour without appropriate diagnosis. Emergency extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was cannulated for sufficient respiratory support after spontaneous circulation was regained. After the multidiscipl...