Introduction: A prospective study was carried out, with the aim of establishing the clinical manifestations of cholelithiasis in the population of Quito, Ecuador. Methods: During the period from January 2012 to October 2017, 534 patients were referred from different outpatient clinics of the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security to the Batan Medical Center with the diagnosis of cholelithiasis after a clinical assessment and abdominal ultrasound, to be treated surgically. Results: Sixty-nine percent of patients were female with a male-female ratio of 1:2.21. Mean age was 44.9 years. Pain was the most common symptom in our study: 95.7%. Among these patients, pain was located in the epigastrium in 49.8%, in the right hypochondrium in 45.1% and only 0.8% had low back pain. Pain ranged from moderate and even severe. The remaining 4.3% of patients had dyspepsia or were asymptomatic. Conclusions: This finding highlights the fact that epigastric pain must be always considered as a clinical manifestation on cholelithiasis.
Carotid body tumors (CBT) are rare benign neoplasms of neural crest origin arising from paraganglia cells
located at carotid bifurcation. They are usually treated with surgery and occasionally with radiotherapy (RT)
as a definitive treatment. We report a case of a carotid body tumor (CBT) in a 45-year old woman who was
treated with RT at another institution with intent of diminishing its size and eventually be operated later.
This tumor, located on the left side of the neck, appeared 3 years before and was associated with dysphagia
and odynophagia. A computed tomography (CT) revealed a lesion of 4.7 cm in size. The patient received
54 Gy of RT. As the tumor persisted clinically, an angio-CT performed one year later showed a left CBT of
the same size and a contralateral lesion of 2cm. The surgical resection of this smaller right lesion was
performed first and, of the persistent left lesion, one month later. No technical difficulties were found on
the resection of the latter tumor and rather decreased peripheral vascularization was present. The histological
findings revealed changes due to RT. In an exhaustive review of the literature, there were no findings of any
report of surgical resection of a CBT after the primary RT.
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