[The use of piperacillin in the preoperative prophylaxis of colorectal surgery]. / L'impiego della piperacillina nella profilassi preoperatoria della chirurgia colorettale.

The authors present a prospective trial in 34 patients undergoing elective colo-rectal surgery. Seventeen patients received 2 g of piperacillin; intravenously, 30' min before surgery, and again 5 times, postoperatively, every 6 hours. The other 17 patients received 2 g of the same drug, intravenously, every 12 hours, immediately after surgery, at least for 5 days. The first group showed postoperative wound infections, with a rate of 11.75%. In the second group 5 patients showed postoperative infection, with a rate of 29.41%. There were 3 wound infections, one urinary tract infection and two pleuropolmonitis (a patient had two infections simultaneously). No side effects were registered. The better results registered in the first group, suggest the use of piperacillin in shortterm prophylaxis. This choice is attractive because of the comparison with other antibiotics, used in a similar way, shows similar results.

[Kaposi's sarcoma--classic form. A rare familial case]. / Sarcoma di Kaposi--forma classica. Un raro caso familiare.

Although Kaposi's sarcoma became very well-known with the outbreak of AIDS, this pathology in the classic Mediterranean form is still unusual and obscure. Nowadays we identify four types of Kaposi's sarcoma: 1) the classic Mediterranean form, 2) the endemic African one, 3) the therapeutical in immunosuppressed patients, 4) the epidemic AIDS-related one. We report a very rare case of familial Kaposi's sarcoma: the father (72 y.o.) manifested Kaposi's sarcoma in 1989 with several angiomatoid nodules on the penis and hands; the son (31 y.o.) presented in 1991 only one little nodule on the penis. The right therapy in these cases (patients with a small number of localizations) was to remove all the tumors and to wait: whereas in other cases it's preferable to use radio- or chemo-therapy or immunomodulator agents. We studied the patients and identified their form of Kaposi like the classic one not completely related (the son) to the HLA DR5, which is the HLA-phenotype most frequent in this sarcoma. Moreover we stress the rarity of genital localization in the classic form, instead it is very common (20%) in the AIDS-related one.