Preoperative immunonutrition prior to radical cystectomy: a pilot study.

INTRODUCTION: To investigate the use of a high-arginine immunonutrient supplement prior to radical cystectomy for bladder cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We recruited 40 patients to consume a total of four high-arginine immunonutrient shakes per day for 5 days prior to radical cystectomy. The primary outcome measures were safety, tolerability and adherence to the supplementation regimen. Ninety-day postoperative outcomes were also compared between supplemented patients and a cohort of 104 prospectively identified non-supplemented radical cystectomy patients. Multivariable logistic regression models were used to compare overall complications, infectious complications, and readmission rates between groups. RESULTS: There were no serious adverse events during supplementation. Four patients (10%) stopped supplementation due to nausea (n = 2) and bloating (n = 2). Thirty-three patients (83%) consumed all prescribed shakes. Immunonutrient supplementation was not significantly associated with overall complications (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 1.08; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.50-2.33), infectious complications (OR 1.23; 95% CI 0.49-3.07), or readmissions (OR 1.48; 95% CI 0.62-3.51) on multivariable analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Preoperative supplementation with a high-arginine immunonutrient shake was safe and well tolerated prior to radical cystectomy. Contrary to prior reports, immunonutrient supplementation was not associated with lower postoperative infectious complications in this cohort, perhaps owing to the 5 day supplementation period. Further study is needed to identify the optimal immunonutrient supplement regimen for radical cystectomy patients.

False memory in a short-term memory task.

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) paradigm reliably elicits false memories for critical nonpresented words in recognition tasks. The present studies used a Sternberg (1966) task with DRM lists to determine whether false memories occur in short-term memory tasks and to assess the contribution of latency data in the measurement of false memories. Subjects studied three, five, or seven items from DRM lists and responded to a single probe (studied or nonstudied). In both experiments, critical lures were falsely recognized more often than nonpresented weak associates. Latency data indicated that correct rejections of critical lures were slower than correct rejections of weakly related items at all set sizes. False alarms to critical lures were slower than hits to list items. Latency data can distinguish veridical and false memories in a short-term memory task. Results are discussed in terms of activation-monitoring models of false memory.

The role of test structure in creating false memories.

In the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, studying lists of semantic associates results in high rates of false recognition of a nonpresented critical word. The present set of experiments was designed to measure the contribution of additional processing of list items at test to this false memory effect. The participants studied sets of lists and then performed a recognition task for each set. In three experiments, using this paradigm, we investigated false recognition when the number of studied list items presented at test (0, 6, or 12) was manipulated. In Experiments 2 and 3, false recognition of critical lures associated to both studied and nonstudied lists increased significantly as the number of list items included in the test increased. These results indicate that processes occurring at retrieval contribute to false memory effects found with the DRM paradigm.