Grassroots responsiveness to human rights abuse: history of the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

The purpose of this article is to discuss how a community agency based in Washtenaw County, the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigration Rights (WICIR), emerged in response to increasing punitive immigration practices and human rights abuses toward the Latino community. The article discusses how WICIR is engaged in advocacy, community education on immigration issues, and political action toward a more humane immigration reform. Detailed examples of human rights abuses and the WICIR activities described in response to the abuses serve as illustrations of social work advocacy, education, and policy formulation that affect the general public, policymakers, and law enforcement officials.

Manejo de la patología tiroídea: utilidad y limitaciones de la biopsia percutánea con aguja fina y de la biopsia rápida / Management of thyroid pathology: usefulness and limitations of percutaneous biopsy with fine needle and quick biopsy

Fine needle aspiration biopsy of the thyroid (FNAB) has become an accepted procedure for evaluation of the thyroid nodule, with 899 performed at the Lahey Clinic from 1981 to 1990. We examined them by medical record, pathology and cytology review, with follow up by chart or personal communication. Three hundred forty five came to surgery, of which 188 (34 percent) were malignant; the specificity of the aspirate was 97 percent, sensitivity 92 percent, with false negative of 8 percnt and false positive rate of 5 percent. In combination with frozen section, the fine needle aspirate result improved the accuracy of the intraoperative estimate of malignancy (p=0.03). When the aspiration was benign but the lesion was clinically suspicious, a cancer was found at surgery in 13 percent of cases. Of the patients observed for a minimum of 5 years, 1,3 percent developed a carcinoma. Both cases had a non diagnostic FNAB. None of the patients with a clinical and cytological benign lesion developed cancer. The complication rate of FNAB was 1.3 percent. FNAB is a helpful and low risk diagnostic procedure but it needs to be done and read appropriately and its result used within the clinical context. Each medical team needs to monitor their results (continued quality control)