No abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the most frequent malignant tumors worldwide: Portal vein tumor thrombosis (PVTT) occurs in about 35%-50% of patients and represents a strong negative prognostic factor, due to the increased risk of tumor spread into the bloodstream, leading to a high recurrence risk. For this reason, it is a contraindication to liver transplantation and in several prognostic scores sorafenib represents its standard of care, due to its antiangiogenetic action, although it can grant only a poor prolongation of life expectancy. Recent scientific evidences lead to consider PVTT as a complex anatomical and clinical condition, including a wide range of patients with different prognosis and new treatment possibilities according to the degree of portal system involvement, tumor biological aggressiveness, complications caused by portal hypertension, patient’s clinical features and tolerance to antineoplastic treatments. The median survival has been reported to range between 2.7 and 4 mo in absence of therapy, but it can vary from 5 mo to 5 years, thus depicting an extremely variable scenario. For this reason, it is extremely important to focus on the most adequate strategy to be applied to each group of PVTT patients.

No abstract

Background and purpose: The objective of this study was to assess the neurological manifestations in a series of consecutive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-positive patients, comparing their frequency with a population hospitalized in the same period for flu/respiratory symptoms, finally not related to SARS-CoV-2. Methods: Patients with flu/respiratory symptoms admitted to Fondazione Policlinico Gemelli hospital from 14 March 2020 to 20 April 2020 were retrospectively enrolled. The frequency of neurological manifestations of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection was compared with a control group. Results: In all, 213 patients were found to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, after reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction on nasal or throat swabs, whilst 218 patients were found to be negative and were used as a control group. Regarding central nervous system manifestations, in SARS-CoV-2-positive patients a higher frequency of headache, hyposmia and encephalopathy always related to systemic conditions (fever or hypoxia) was observed. Furthermore, muscular involvement was more frequent in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Conclusions: Patients with COVID-19 commonly have neurological manifestations but only hyposmia and muscle involvement seem more frequent compared with other flu diseases.