No abstract

Background: Pulmonary and mediastinal paragangliomas are rare tumors that may have neuroendocrine activity or be non-functional, incidental, in asymptomatic patients, or causing mass effect symptoms. Although being low-grade tumors, they can display an aggressive behaviour, developing local infiltration and distant metastases. We report our experience with three endothoracic paragangliomas and a Literature review, to point out diagnostic difficulties and problems related to surgical treatment. Methods: From 2009 to 2017, we treated 3 patients with histological diagnosis of paraganglioma: 2 pulmonary, 1 mediastinal. No one presented catecholamine-secreting syndromes; pulmonary cases were asymptomatic, while the mediastinal one had aspecific cough and dyspnea. Imaging diagnosis was based on chest computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. No patient had preoperative histological diagnosis. Intraoperative pathological examination was suggestive for malignancy: in pulmonary cases, wedge resection and lobectomy were performed; the middle mediastinal mass was completely removed after challenging dissection, isolation and section of numerous vascular pedicles. Results: Postoperative course was uneventful in all cases. No patient received adjuvant treatments. At a median follow-up of 47 months (range, 6-102 months), two patients are alive, without local or distant recurrence; one patient died 6 months after surgery, due to disease progression. Conclusions: Endothoracic paragangliomas, rare and often asymptomatic tumors, are of difficult diagnosis and should be considered malignant tumors, due to the potential aggressive behaviour of cases with high mitotic index and the frequent possibility of recurrence and metastases. Surgical resection is the treatment of choice and careful intraoperative manipulation is recommended, due to the high vascularity of these tumors, to prevent complications. After complete excision, long-term prognosis is generally good. However, even after surgical removal, a close, periodical and lifelong follow-up is mandatory.

Chest trauma is the third most common injury in trauma patients and its presence in the setting of multi-systemic trauma can significantly increase patients' morbidity and mortality. In up to 15% of cases, flail chest (FC) may occur as a consequence of blunt trauma; it is defined as a pathologic condition that happens "when three or more adjacent ribs are fractured in at least two places, creating a chest wall segment that moves paradoxically from the chest wall" (1,2) (Figure 1). The fast evolution to respiratory failure and death (occurring from 10 to 36% of cases), as well as late complications like pneumonia, ARDS, atelectasis, chronic pain and deformity (3,4), make the proper management

Nonbacterial thrombotic endocarditis (NBTE) is a rare clinical condition characterized by the presence of sterile vegetations on valvular leaflets Gross and Friedberg (1936). The most frequent cause of NBTE is antiphospholipid syndrome Hughson and et al. (1993); malignancy, through an intrinsic condition of hypercoagulability, is the second most common cause Thomas (2001). Systemic thromboembolic complications are frequently associated with this condition, but coronary embolism is not common. We report the case of a patient with NBTE secondary to gastric adenocarcinoma with clinical symptoms of coronary and systemic emboli.

Radical thymectomy is the gold standard treatment for thymoma; in particular, completeness of surgical resection of a well-encapsulated thymoma and adequate margins are considered the most important prognostic factors. According to the International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group instructions, in fact, the thymus should be resected en bloc with its upper cervical poles and the surrounding mediastinal fat and through a no-touch surgical technique. For years, the open approaches have been considered the gold standard treatment for thymic masses, because of technical advantages and proved good oncological results. When applied to properly chosen patients on the basis of the tumor stage, dimension, and histology, minimally invasive approaches could be as effective as open ones in terms of long-term outcomes. To accomplish a minimally invasive thymoma resection, several minimally invasive techniques (transcervical, subxiphoid, thoracoscopic, and robotic) have been described, each presenting advantages and drawbacks. Moreover, when dealing with early stage neoplasms, many authors have proposed to perform the thymomectomy alone, not involving the rest of the thymic gland, but evidence is still imprecise and vague, and some studies have described a higher rate of local recurrence when using this technique. Finally, many studies suggest that surgeons with expertise in minimally invasive lymphadenectomy for lung cancer may easily endorse the idea of nodal dissection, to be performed at least in advanced thymomas involving neighboring structures, large masses, and thymic carcinomas.

anatomical lung resections is associated with shorter air leak, shorter drainage time, shorter hospital stay compared to two chest tube drainage. Routine use of single chest tube is safe and effective treatment.

We present the case of a 54-year-old woman in which a diffuse congenital supravalvular aortic stenosis (SVAS) was associated with a severe aortic valve incompetence and heavy calcification of the aortic annulus. Repair consisted in resection of the ascending aorta, patch augmentation of the hypoplastic aortic root and annulus, placement of a 20 mm Dacron tubular graft (Vascutek, Renfrewshire, UK) and aortic valve replacement with a mechanical prosthesis (Sorin, Turin, Italy). Follow-up echocardiography demonstrated normal prosthetic valve function and a postoperative three-dimensional computed tomographic scan showed a normal shape of the reconstructed ascending aorta.

We report the case of a 14-year-old boy affected by Tetralogy of Fallot and pulmonary atresia, who had already undergone multiple surgical procedures. He had later developed a steno-insufficiency of the pulmonary bioprosthesis. We performed a percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation (PPVI), which is a minimally invasive treatment, as effective as conventional valve surgery and associated with less morbidity and mortality. Up to now PPVI has been carried out in patients with chronic pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) in the presence of a right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT) patch by prior deployment of an intravascular stent as an artificial conduit that makes subsequent valve implantation possible. The peculiarity of our procedure was that we implanted the valve directly on to the annulus of the bioprosthesis (valve-in-valve), without performing a prestenting of the prosthetic valve.