Cardiac ultrasound has rapidly developed into one of the most important clinical methods for diagnosis and follow-up of patients with heart disease and has changed the practice of cardiology permanently. In addition to improving image quality, most of the progress relies on digital image acquisition, storage, and quantitative analysis equipment. Automatic endocardial detection and three dimensional reconstruction are now being developed. The progress with contrast echocardiography for myocardial perfusion imaging and results with tissue characterization is slow, but ever increasing,...
Cardiac ultrasound has rapidly developed into one of the most important clinical methods for diagnosis and follow-up of patients with heart disease an...
Vittorio E. Andreucci of keeping alive patients in terminal chronic Initially created with the purpose renal failure, dialysis has undergone improvements in methodology, and its final goal has become complete health rehabilitation and optimization of the quality of life of chronic dialysis patients. To achieve this, many investigators have attempted to increase dialysis efficiency and at the same time shorten dialysis time. Their main concern was, obviously, patient safety: the Latin proverb 'primum non nocere' is still valid all over the world. Thus, when clinical observations of the first...
Vittorio E. Andreucci of keeping alive patients in terminal chronic Initially created with the purpose renal failure, dialysis has undergone improveme...
The behavior of the kidney in normal pregnancy, as well as in complicated pregnancy, is a very interesting, but still in many ways an unknown topic in renal medicine. It is undoubtedly difficult to determine, even in normal women, the behavior of renal hemodynamics throughout gestation, since the fear of impairing a new life (i.e., the fetus's life) will limit, for ethical reasons, the use or the frequent repetition of diagnostic tests on the mother. On the other hand, the study of complicated pregnancy even for diagnostic purposes (for planning adequate treatment), except in a few countries...
The behavior of the kidney in normal pregnancy, as well as in complicated pregnancy, is a very interesting, but still in many ways an unknown topic in...
IgA nephropathy has, in the course of two decades, become one of the most important renal diseases. Not only is it the most common form of glo- merulonephritis seen in many countries, its increasing recognition by renal biopsy in this time has allowed sufficient study to conclude that it is also one of the most frequent causes of end-stage renal failure. The clinical features are diverse, and only in a minority do recurrent macroscopic hematuric episodes associated with an upper respiratory tract infection allow a confident clinical diagnosis. All clinicians, from community practitioners to...
IgA nephropathy has, in the course of two decades, become one of the most important renal diseases. Not only is it the most common form of glo- merulo...
Enormous progress has been made in the treatment of chronic renal failure over the last decades. Until the 1950s, chronic renal failure was considered to be an inexorably lethal condition. This is no longer the case. In addition, the disease, severe uremic syndrome, is now extremely rare, if existent at all, in industrialized countries. Physicians of my generation who saw patients hospitalized with hemor raghes, pericarditis, severe anemia, cardiac failure, "malignant hypertension," pruritus, vomiting, generalized edema, and convulsions are particularly grate ful for this progress. I well...
Enormous progress has been made in the treatment of chronic renal failure over the last decades. Until the 1950s, chronic renal failure was considered...
When the external Quinton-Scribner arteriovenous shunt was developed in 1960, and, a little later, the internal Brescia-Cimino arteriovenous fistula was developed as a vascular access for hemodialysis, thereby making possible regular dialysis therapy of chronic uremic patients, many nephrologists became surgeons, having learned the type of vascular surgery related to hemodialysis quite well. The same series of events occurred with regards to peritoneal dialysis with the introduction of the Tenckhoff catheter and the need for gaining a permanent access to the peritoneum for chronic ambulatory...
When the external Quinton-Scribner arteriovenous shunt was developed in 1960, and, a little later, the internal Brescia-Cimino arteriovenous fistula w...
Genetic disorders have emerged as a prominent cause of morbidity and mor tality among infants and adults. As many as 10% to 20% of hospital admis sions and at least 10% of the mortality in this age group are due to inherited diseases. There are at least two factors that have brought genetic disorders into the forefront of pediatrics. One is a great reduction in childhood mortality due to infections and nutritional deficiency states, and the other is the rapid progress made in the identification of genetic defects. Amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, and recombinant DNA technology have...
Genetic disorders have emerged as a prominent cause of morbidity and mor tality among infants and adults. As many as 10% to 20% of hospital admis sion...
Vittorio E. Andreucci of keeping alive patients in terminal chronic Initially created with the purpose renal failure, dialysis has undergone improvements in methodology, and its final goal has become complete health rehabilitation and optimization of the quality of life of chronic dialysis patients. To achieve this, many investigators have attempted to increase dialysis efficiency and at the same time shorten dialysis time. Their main concern was, obviously, patient safety: the Latin proverb 'primum non nocere' is still valid all over the world. Thus, when clinical observations of the first...
Vittorio E. Andreucci of keeping alive patients in terminal chronic Initially created with the purpose renal failure, dialysis has undergone improveme...
During the past decade, there has been a renaissance of interest in the use of peritoneal dialysis as a primary dialytic modality for the treatment of children with end stage renal disease (ESRD). The development of the technique of continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) and continuous cycling peritoneal dialysis (CCPD) has markedly changed the approach to children requiring dialytic therapy. The availability of these techniques has facilitated prolonged dialysis in infants and has for the first time given pediatric nephro logists in many areas of the world an opportunity to...
During the past decade, there has been a renaissance of interest in the use of peritoneal dialysis as a primary dialytic modality for the treatment of...
CHARLES Y. c. PAK Major progress has been made in the pathophysiologic elucidation and management of nephrolithiasis during the past two decades. It is now possible to detect the cause of stone disease in more than 95% of patients, to prevent recurrent formation of stones in the majority of patients, and to remove most existing stones less invasively. The assumption of editorship of this book permits me to indulge in the discussion of this progress from my personal perspective. Three somewhat fortuitous events in my academic career dictated my directing major efforts in stone research. The...
CHARLES Y. c. PAK Major progress has been made in the pathophysiologic elucidation and management of nephrolithiasis during the past two decades. It i...