Penile calciphylaxis: A case series in a Tertiary hospital in the Philippines

@#Penile calciphylaxis is a rare penile condition associated with end-stage renal disease and is found in 1-4% of hemodialysis patients. The condition has an overall mortality of 64%. Literature has yet to provide a gold standard for the management of this condition. The first case is a 58-year-old diabetic and hypertensive on hemodialysis who presented with ulcerating lesions on the penis. The patient underwent partial penectomy. The patient contracted pneumonia during recovery and expired 3 months after the procedure. The second case is a 56-year-old diabetic with end stage renal disease on dialysis who presented with dry gangrene of the penis. He underwent partial penectomy and was sent home after recovery.

Male lower urinary tract symptoms in correlation with age, quality of life scores, parameters of uroflowmetry and prostate size, a single institution study

OBJECTIVE@#To correlate male lower urinary tract symptoms between age, quality of life scores,parameters of uroflowmetry and prostate size.@*PATIENTS AND METHODS@#Two hundred eight males were included in this study. Uroflowmetry parameters,age, International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), Quality of Life (QoL) scores and prostate sizewere gathered. For correlation, distribution of age, uroflowmetry parameters and prostate size werefirst compared to IPSS. Analysis of variance was used to compare age of patients, while Kruskall-wallis test was used to compare the QoL, uroflowmetry parameters, and prostate size on each IPSSgroups. Ordinal logistic regression analysis was used to correlate IPSS to age, quality of life,uroflowmetry parameters, and prostate size both for multivariate and univariate analysis.@*RESULTS@#There was no significant correlation between age and IPSS. However, on profile distribution,the age distribution between symptom scores were statistically similar. Qol scores were directlyproportional to IPSS. Thus, patients with a worse QoL score were more likely to have higher IPSS.Qmax scores decreased as symptom severity increased. Patients with higher Qmax scores are lesslikely to have higher IPSS scores. Voided volume was observed to decrease as IPSS severity increased,but this was not statistically significant. Patients with higher post void residual scores were morelikely to have higher IPSS. There was also no significant correlation between prostate size and IPSS.@*CONCLUSION@#There were no significant correlation between IPSS and age, voided volume and prostatesize. On the other hand, patients with a worse QoL score and a high post void residual had higherIPSS. Patients with a high Qmax, are less likely to have an elevated IPSS.

Cognitive-behavioural group therapy improves a psychophysiological marker of stress in caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

BACKGROUND: Family caregivers of patients with dementia frequently experience psychological stress, depression and disturbed psychophysiological activity, with increased levels of diurnal cortisol secretion. OBJECTIVES: To compare the effects of a cognitive-behavioural group therapy (CBT) to a psychoeducation group programme (EDUC) on cortisol secretion in caregivers of patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHOD: Caregivers of AD outpatients were semi-randomly allocated to one of two intervention programmes (CBT or EDUC) consisting of eight weekly sessions. Twenty-six participants completed the study. Before and after intervention, salivary cortisol was collected at four different times of the day. Effects of the interventions were evaluated with self-report psychological scales and questionnaires related to functional abilities and neuropsychiatric symptoms of the AD relative. RESULTS: Only in the CBT group did salivary cortisol levels significantly decrease after intervention, with a large effect size and high achieved power. Both groups reported a reduction of neuropsychiatric symptoms of their AD relative after intervention. CONCLUSION: Psychoeducation for caregivers may contribute to a reduction of neuropsychiatric symptoms of AD patients while CBT additionally attenuates psychophysiological responses to stressful situations in caregivers, by reducing diurnal cortisol levels. This may lead to a positive impact in the general health of the caregiver, eventually resulting in better care of the AD patient.

Early gastric cancer: report of twenty-five cases.

Among 267 surgical specimens of histologically proved cancer of the stomach during the last 20 years (1957 to 1976), 25 were classified as early gastric cancer. Of these early gastric cancers, 16 were found during the last 5 year period. The increasing number of early gastric cancers found in the recent years may be attributed to the more aggressive diagnostic approaches in patients who have symptoms suggestive of peptic ulcer disease. Another factor which may contribute to the increased incidence of early detection of gastric cancer is a more aggressive surgical treatment in patients with a gastric ulcer. Some patients with early gastric cancer will remain undetected if the surgical treatment was vagotomy and pyloroplasty. Lymph node metastases were present in six patients in this series. Of these 25 patients who had gastric resection for early cancer, follow-up was available in 20. Two patients were noted to have local recurrence at 3 and 8 years, respectively, after the initial operation. One of these two patients died after reoperation and the other still is living. One other patient died of cerebral hemorrhage 12 years following the initial operation of gastric resection. The remaining 17 patients all are living, with no evidence of recurrence. From these results it is concluded that (1) routine gastroscopy should be done in patients with radiological gastric abnormalities and in patients with symptoms suggestive of peptic ulcer disease, even though the upper gastrointestinal series is normal; (2) multiple biopsies should be taken from gastric lesions seen on gastroscopy; and (3) gastrectomy is the treatment of choice, since some of the early gastric cancers in this series would have remained undetected if vagotomy and pyloroplasty had been performed.