diagnosis

The italian dementia with Lewy bodies study group (DLB-SINdem): toward a standardization of clinical procedures and multicenter cohort studies design

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) causes elevated outlays for the National Health Systems due to high institutionalization rate and patients' reduced quality of life and high mortality. Furthermore, DLB is often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease. These data motivate harmonized multicenter longitudinal cohort studies to improve clinical management and therapy monitoring.

Treatment of alcohol dependence. Alcohol and homelessness: social point of view

The phenomenon of homeless people is eliciting a devastating social impact with an estimated prevalence in the USA and in Europe between 5.6% and 13.9%. These persons have a poor quality of life, a limited or no social life. They are often unemployed or work only occasionally. They are at risk for problems with the law and often suffering from addiction to other drugs, psychiatric and other medical diseases. Alcohol is often not the cause of their social status, but only the result of other discomforts thus contributing to their bio-psycho-social degradation.

Drafting a dual diagnosis program: A tailored intervention for patients with complex clinical needs

Background. Clinical practice of mental health services changed in 1978 after the Basaglia Law was passed, and it is now characterized by usually voluntary treatments offered by community-based services. That broadened the interventions' focus from the single subject to their environment. Dual diagnosis is defined by WHO as «the co-occurrence in the same individual of a psychoactive substance use disorder and another psychiatric disorder». It is considered to be a "border territory" since entails networking between different medical services. Materials and methods.

Chromogranin a as circulating marker for diagnosis and management of neuroendocrine neoplasms: More flaws than fame

Owing to the heterogeneity of neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs), the availability of
reliable circulating markers is critical for improving diagnostics, prognostic stratification,
follow-up and definition of treatment strategy. This review is focused on chromogranin A
(CgA), a hydrophilic glycoprotein present in large dense core vesicles of neuroendocrine
cells. Despite being long identified as the most useful NEN-related circulating marker,
clinical application of CgA is controversial. CgA assays still lack standardization, thus

Physiological responses to induced stress in individuals affected by alcohol use disorder with dual diagnosis and alexithymia

Alcohol use disorders (AUD) are among the most common and undertreated
mental disorders in developed countries. The co-occurrence
of psychiatric comorbidity and AUD has already been well documented.
Moreover, alexithymia was found associated with heavy drinking
and alcohol dependence. A large part of AUD individuals, between
45 and 67%, have been identified as alexithymics. Both psychiatric
comorbidity and alexithymia can negatively impact the course of
recovery from alcohol. Alcohol consumption has also been shown to

Characteristics of a nationwide cohort of patients presenting with Isolated Hypogonadotropic Hypogonadism (IHH)

IHH is a rare disorder with pubertal delay, normal (normoosmic-IHH, nIHH) or defective sense of smell (Kallmann syndrome, KS). Other reproductive and non-reproductive anomalies might be present altough information on their frequency are scanty, particularly according to the age of presentation.
DESIGN:

Sonographic presentation of metastases to the thyroid gland: a case-series

Incidental sonographic discovery of thyroid nodules is an increasingly common event. The vast majority are benign, and those that are malignant are generally associated with an indolent course and low mortality. Sonographic scoring systems have been developed to help clinicians identify nodules that warrant prompt fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC), but they are based largely on experience with papillary thyroid cancers.

Spontaneous deep femoral artery false aneurysm simulating a neoplasm. A rare case and literature review

A 70-year-old woman presented to our attention with a painless pulsating mass at the level of the upper left thigh without any previous history of trauma, arterial surgery, or puncture of the femoral artery. Duplex ultrasound showed a nodular angiomatous-like formation with deep venous compression; computed tomographic angiography and magnetic resonance imaging reported the presence of capsulated lesion vascularized by muscular branch of deep femoral artery (DFA). The patient underwent surgical excision of a very rare thrombized DFA branch false aneurysm.

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