Symptomatic patients with sonographically detected bowel wall thickening have a poor prognosis compared with patients without this finding. In addition, mural thickness of more than 10 mm is associated with poorer outcome among patients with NE.

Macrocytic anemia is not the only hematological presentation of ABG. Physicians evaluating patients with unexplained iron deficiency anemia should consider ABG as a possible cause by determining fasting gastrin levels and performing gastroscopy with biopsies of the body mucosa.

Macrocytic anemia is not the only hematological presentation of ABG. Physicians evaluating patients with unexplained iron deficiency anemia should consider ABG as a possible cause by determining fasting gastrin levels and performing gastroscopy with biopsies of the body mucosa.

No abstract

Our data outline the great heterogeneity of elderly AML patients not eligible for intensive CT. A simple scoring system including easily evaluable parameters, which could distinguish subjects with different prognosis, is proposed. Moreover, randomized studies in order to establish best conservative approaches are warranted.

Although consensus exists relating criteria for the identification of low-risk patients with febrile neutropenia, no clear indication on how to manage these patients has been so far provided particularly in outpatients affected by hematologic malignancies. The feasibility and safety of early discharge was prospectively evaluated in 100 outpatients with hematologic malignancies and febrile neutropenia. A strategy considering the risk-index of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC) was applied. High-risk patients were entirely managed at hospital. Low-risk patients were early discharged if they were afebrile since 48 h and not on supportive therapy requiring hospitalization. Out of 90 low-risk episodes, in 69 instances (76.7%), patients were discharged after a median of 4 days and continued home therapy with oral cefixime (78%) or other antibiotics. Only five outpatients (7.2%) had fever recurrence. Twenty-one low-risk patients were not early discharged due to worsening conditions (three deaths), need of multiple daily dose therapy, or discharge refuse. No clinical characteristic was able to predict the eligibility for early discharge. The MASCC risk-index is a useful aid in the identification of high-risk febrile neutropenia needing whole in-hospital treatment. As for low-risk patients, hospitalization at least in the first days of fever is required. Cefixime could be included among the oral antibacterial drugs to be used in the outpatient treatment of adult patients with febrile neutropenia.

No abstract

Summary. Two cases of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) with CD2 and CD7 expression associated with diabetes insipidus (DI) as the initial symptom are presented. Both patients had t(3;3)(q21;q26) associated with monosomy 7 and EVI-1 overexpression. No neurohypophysis infiltration was evident. One patient died during induction chemotherapy, the other did not respond to therapy and died with persistent DI. Our findings further support the existence of a distinct AML entity characterized by the presence of DI, abnormalities of chromosome 3q, dysmegakaryopoiesis and poor outcome, and provide evidence of EVI-1 gene involvement. The possible role of chromosome 3q26 abnormalities in determining this peculiar clinical-biological association is emphasized.