Superficial radiotherapy for multiple keratoacanthomas.

We report the case of a 76-year-old Caucasian woman who attended our clinic with multiple keratoacanthomas. Radiotherapy was considered a viable and effective option in such an old patient, who could not be a good surgical candidate for number and distribution of the lesions, and for the age. After a 12-month follow-up, we observed the complete and global disappearance of the lesions; the patient was therefore very satisfied especially in view of the clinical outcome. According to our point of view, radiotherapy allows the physician to obtain a good oncological radicality and excellent cosmetic results too.

Breast cancer patients: long-term relapses.

The authors evaluated 200 cases of long-term relapses in patients subjected to mastectomy at least 8 years before and not given any hormonal or other therapy that would have significantly affected the course of the disease. A group of 200 mastectomy patients with early relapses (within 3 years) was used as a control. The following parameters were compared: histologic type, singularity or multiplicity of the relapses at the time of the diagnosis, the patient's age at the time of the mastectomy, the presence of metastatic lymphnodes at the axilla, the clinical course of the disease after the diagnosis of relapse, and the presence of estrogen receptors in the primary tumor. There was a significant higher incidence of lobular histologic type in the group of patients with long-term relapses (p < 0.001). The cases with long-term relapses showed a relatively lower number of relapses in local-region lymphnodes (p < 0.005) a higher number of cases with metastases to the axillary lymphnodes at the time of mastectomy (p < 0.001), a better clinical course (survival) after the diagnosis (mean 3 vs 2.6 years), and more cases with estrogen receptors (p < 0.001) than controls. Premenopausal or postmenopausal status at the time of mastectomy was not significant. After a review of the literature, the authors conclude that relapses that appear after 8 years from the mastectomy occur almost exclusively in patients with a cancer for which the hormonal factor is very important. They hypothesize that even the 18 cases of the series who were without estrogen receptors in reality had receptors saturated by circulating estrogens or receptors for other hormones.

Effect of mobile phase additives on peptide retention in reversed-phase chromatography with pellicular and totally porous sorbents.

The effect of two mobile phase additives, trifluoroacetic acid and phosphoric acid, on the energetics of peptide retention in reversed-phase chromatography was investigated using Hy-Tach C18 micropellicular and Vydac C4 and C18 totally porous stationary phases. The effect of the relatively low phase ratio of columns packed with micropellicular sorbents was also examined. The logarithmic retention factors, of two model peptides, Ac-RGGGGLGLGK-amide and Ac-RGAGGLGLGK-amide, were evaluated with different columns and additives in a practical range of eluent strength. The dependence of the logarithmic retention factor on the concentration of acetonitrile in the mobile phase was linear in all cases. The higher sensitivity of the retention to the organic modifier concentration in the case of the Hy-Tach C18 column is attributed to the relatively low phase ratio of this column. Pairwise plots of the logarithmic retention factors were linear. The plots of data obtained with the two additives has unit slopes and thus reveal homoenergetic retention behavior. On the other hand data obtained on two different columns manifest homeoenergetic retention, the slopes of plots are different from unity. The analysis has yielded consistent results and validated the assumption that the retention free energy can be divided into two components arising from mobile phase and stationary phase contributions. The approach also allowed an estimation of the relative phase ratios of the columns and the Vydac C18 column was found to have an 3 and 8 times higher phase ratio than the Vydac C4 and the Hy-Tech C18 column, respectively.