Whereas the vast majority of the recommendations made in 2004 remain valid 3 yr later, refinements in the treatment of early-stage as well as of advanced-stage testicular cancer have emerged from clinical trials. Despite technical improvements, expert clinical skills will continue to be one of the major determinants for the prognosis of patients with germ cell cancer. In addition, the particular needs of testicular cancer survivors have been acknowledged.

Metanephric adenoma is a rare tumor of the kidney. So far metanephric adenomas were considered to be benign, slowly growing and non-metastasizing tumors with an excellent prognosis. Only recently two cases of metastasized metanephric adenomas were published. Therefore, diagnostic work up, therapy and follow up of this tumor have to be reassessed. We report the case of a 42 year old male with metanephric adenoma. Current literature concerning metanephric adenoma is reviewed.

BackgroundWe aimed to better discriminate metastasized (lymphogen/occult/both combined) from non-metastasized seminoma based on post-transcriptional changes examined in the peripheral blood.MethodsTotal RNAs including small RNAs were isolated from the peripheral blood of patients suffering from metastasized testicular tumours (lymphogen, n = 5, clinical stage IIb/c; occult, n = 5, clinical stage I) and non-metastasized patients (n = 5, clinical stage I). Small RNA next generation sequencing (SOLID, Life Technologies) was employed to examine post-transcriptional changes. We searched for small RNAs showing at least 50 reads and a significant ≥ 2-fold difference using peripheral blood small RNAs of non-metastasized tumours as the reference group. Candidate small RNAs were examined in univariate logistic regression analysis and combinations of two small RNAs were further examined using support vector machines.ResultsOn average 1.3x107, 1.2x107 and 1.2x107 small RNA reads were detectable in non-metastasized, lymphogen and occult metastasized seminoma, respectively of which 73-76% remained after trimming. From these between 80-82% represented annotated reads and 7.2-7.8% (1.6-1.7x104) were annotated small RNA tags. Of them 137 small RNAs showed > 50 reads and a ≥ two-fold difference to the reference. In univariate analysis we detected 33-35 different small RNAs which significantly discriminated lymphogen/occult/combined metastasized from non-metastasized seminoma and among these different comparisons it were the same small RNAs in 44-79%. Many combinations of two of these small RNAs completely discriminated metastasized from non-metastasized seminoma irrespective of the metastasis subtype.ConclusionsMetastasized (either lymphogen or occult) seminoma can be completely discriminated from non-metastasized seminoma with a combination of two small RNAs measured in the peripheral blood.

Between 1984 and 1994, 27 men and 4 women with primary spontaneous pneumothorax were treated surgically by excision of the bullae, without pleurectomy. The purpose of the present study was to establish by computed tomography (CT) of the lung whether the excision permanently eliminated the cause of pneumothorax. The median follow-up was 72 (21-127) months. There were two patients with recurrences (6.4%) who were operated on again. Sixteen of 31 patients had new blebs in the apex of the lung as documented by postoperative CT. The study indicates that simple excision of the bullous area cannot prevent the recurrence of blebs.