Background: Acute cholangitis is a life-threatening bacterial infection of the biliary tract. Main focus of this study was to create a useful risk prediction model that helps physicians to assign patients with acute cholangitis into different management groups. Methods: 981 cholangitis episodes from 810 patients were analysed retrospectively at a German tertiary center.

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Complications of both IBD and immunosuppressive therapy may be live-threatening in patients with IBD. Better characterization of patients with a high probability of improved outcome by immunosuppressive and/or antibody-therapy seems to be preferable to noncritical early use of these drugs.

Malnutrition in critically ill patients with cirrhosis is a frequent but often overlooked complication with high prognostic relevance. The Nutrition Risk in Critically ill (NUTRIC) score and its modified variant (mNUTRIC) were established to assess the nutrition risk of intensive care unit patients. Considering the high mortality of cirrhosis in critically ill patients, this study aims to evaluate the discriminative ability of NUTRIC and mNUTRIC to predict outcome. We performed a retro-prospective evaluation in 150 Caucasian cirrhotic patients admitted to our ICU. Comparative prognostic analyses between NUTRIC and mNUTRIC were assessed in 114 patients. On ICU admission, a large proportion of 65% were classified as high NUTRIC (6–10) and 75% were categorized as high mNUTRIC (5–9). High nutritional risk was linked to disease severity and poor outcome. NUTRIC was moderately superior to mNUTRIC in prediction of 28-day mortality (area under curve 0.806 vs. 0.788) as well as 3-month mortality (area under curve 0.839 vs. 0.819). We found a significant association of NUTRIC and mNUTRIC with MELD, CHILD, renal function, interleukin 6 and albumin, but not with body mass index. NUTRIC and mNUTRIC are characterized by high prognostic accuracy in critically ill patients with cirrhosis. NUTRIC revealed a moderate advantage in prognostic ability compared to mNUTRIC.

Orgotein, the drug version of Cu-Zn superoxide dismutases is a new and safe anti-inflammatory agent. Animal experiments have shown that it does not interfere with the tumourolytic effects of radiation or chemotherapy. A double-blind, placebo-controlled study has demonstrated that orgotein injected after each daily irradiation session can be used safely and effectively to ameliorate or prevent the side effects due to high-energy radiation therapy (8,400 or 6,400 rads) of bladder tumours. Orgotein significantly reduced the signs and symptoms both in the bladder and the bowel, indicating that it provides a therapeutic regimen for control of these side effects, which to date could only be treated symptomatically.