OBJECTIVE To establish the usefulness of cyclosporin for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in a routine clinical setting. METHODS Patients who had received cyclosporin for SLE, mixed connective tissue disease, and other overlap syndromes were identified. Data relating to treatment with cyclosporin, including dosage, concurrent steroid use, response to treatment, side effects, and reasons for...

thymoma is a term that should be restricted to neoplasms of thymic epithelial cells, irrespective of the presence or the number of lymphocytes. the usual location of thymoma is the antrosuperior mediastinum; however, this tumor can also occur in other mediastinal compartments, in the neck, within the thyroid gland, in the pericardial cavity, the pulmonary hilum, within the lung parenchyma, or t...

conclusions this study indicated that the rv systolic strain and strain rate can be used to detect early rv systolic dysfunction in ssc patients without pulmonary hypertension. these parameters may be useful for the provision of a more adequate management of ssc patients. results in the ssc patients, the rv strain (- 19 ± 10 vs. - 25 ± 4 %; p = 0.004) and the systolic strain rate (- 1.3 ± 0.5 v...

The introduction of new antifungal agents (eg, echinocandins, second-generation triazoles) in the past decade has transformed the management of invasive mycoses to the point that drug toxicity is no longer the major limiting factor in treatment. Yet, many of these newer antifungal agents have important limitations in their spectrum of activity, pharmacokinetics, and unique predisposition for ph...

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare and aggressive form of the disease. It is diagnosed based on clinical signs of a rapidly enlarging, tender, erythematous, edematous breast that often presents without an underlying breast mass. IBC historically was considered a uniformly fatal disease. With the advent of multimodality treatments including primary systemic chemotherapy, surgery, and rad...

Introduction The most widely used classification criteria for systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) are those derived and validated in adult patients, by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). However, some of their limitations raise concerns, such as: inclusion of the most typical features only, possible duplication of highly correlated cutaneous manifestations, omission of many neurologic ma...

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a severe manifestation of systemic sclerosis (SSc) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Due to improvements in the understanding of the pathogenesis of these diseases, improved methodological rigour in the conduct of epidemiological studies and the advent of successful therapies, our understanding of SSc-PAH and SLE-PAH has evolved considerably. In th...

Systemic inflammatory responses to severe trauma and surgical illnesses may be partly responsible for numerous complications, including sepsis, multiple organ failure and unregulated hypermetabolism leading to protein-calorie malnutrition. The integrity of the gastrointestinal tract appears to be an important factor in the pathogenesis of the systemic inflammatory response and sepsis. Resuscita...

Cerebral oxygenation is not always reflected by systemic arterial oxygenation. Therefore, regional cerebral oxygen saturation (rScO2) monitoring with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is of added value in neonatal intensive care. rScO2 represents oxygen supply to the brain, while cerebral fractional tissue oxygen extraction, which is the ratio between rScO2 and systemic arterial oxygen saturati...