Scandinavian Journal of Surgery最新文献

Background: Esophagectomy is associated with pulmonary complications. This study evaluated if thoracoscopic minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) mitigates these risks by comparing pulmonary findings on postoperative computed tomography (CT) between open esophagectomy and MIE.

Method: Postoperative (day 5) thoracic CT from 40 patients (20 open and 20 MIE) who had undergone esophagectomy with epidural analgesia and right-sided thoracic drainage were reviewed. On an axial view, the areas of atelectasis and pleural effusion were measured at 1 and 5 cm above the right diaphragmatic dome and at the level of the carina. In addition, the total distribution of atelectasis and pleural effusion was estimated on an ordinal scale (0-5), with ≥3 considered clinically important.

Results: The groups were well-matched in terms of age, sex, and smoking status. There were no differences in the areas of atelectasis or pleural effusion for open surgery compared with MIE. The groups did not differ in the proportion of patients with clinically important atelectasis (right: 30% vs. 25%, left: 65% vs. 65%) or pleural effusion (right: 15% vs. 15%, left: 65% vs. 45%). More pleural effusion and atelectasis at the 1-cm level was present on the left side at day 5 in both open and MIE patients.

Conclusion: Despite major differences in surgical trauma and ventilation strategies between open and MIE, CT evaluation at day 5 was surprisingly similar. Less right-sided pleural effusion demonstrates the effect of surgical drains. We believe that the defined levels of measurement used in this study, performed at clear anatomical landmarks, can be of value in future studies.

International and national guidelines recommend metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) as a treatment option for adolescents with severe obesity, but few countries offer MBS to adolescents in routine clinical care. This narrative review summarizes existing adolescent MBS guidelines and the available underpinning evidence. Two randomized trials and additional prospective studies have demonstrated efficacy and safety in adolescent MBS, and the health benefits appear to be similar or superior to outcomes in adults. However, there are specific challenges regarding the intervention during adolescence related to decision-making capacity and a peak in risk-taking behavior. Adolescents with severe obesity have-as a group-a mental health vulnerability, and specific nutritional concerns need to be addressed in relation to MBS. This review also describes how study findings can be translated into clinical care. We use Sweden as an example, where the National Board of Health and Welfare recommends MBS for selected adolescents with severe obesity aged 15 years or older. We present practical advice for implementing and integrating MBS in adolescents in the framework of multidisciplinary pediatric and adolescent care for obesity.

Background and objective: Breast cancer and its treatments can have a marked impact on the patient health-related quality of life. The aim of this study was to produce and validate Finnish versions of the breast-conserving treatment, mastectomy and breast reconstruction modules of the BREAST-Q, a patient-reported outcome tool designed specifically for women undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

Methods: The relevant BREAST-Q modules were translated to Finnish according to established guidelines. Altogether 777 preoperative women were recruited at the Breast Surgery Unit and the Plastic Surgery Unit of Helsinki University Hospital between December 2019 and March 2021. This included 541 patients scheduled for breast-conserving surgery, 86 for mastectomy, and 150 for breast reconstruction. Postoperative patients were recruited through a postal survey, approaching 500 women operated for breast cancer in 2017, including 250 women who had undergone breast-conserving surgery and 250 women who had undergone mastectomy, as well as 339 women who had undergone breast reconstruction between August 2017 and July 2019. The patients were invited to fill the BREAST-Q modules relevant to their treatment and the general health-related quality-of-life instrument SF-36. A repeat administration of the BREAST-Q was done 2 weeks later.

Results: A total of 665 (41%) women participated in the study, 339 (44%) preoperatively and 326 (39%) postoperatively. The BREAST-Q subscales showed high internal consistency with most Cronbach's alphas > 0.8. The repeatability of the subscales was excellent with most intra-class correlation coefficients > 0.75. Low or negligible correlation was observed between BREAST-Q subscales and SF-36 domains.

Conclusions: The Finnish version of the BREAST-Q modules breast-conserving treatment, mastectomy, and breast reconstruction performs well in assessing the health-related quality of life of women undergoing surgery for breast cancer or breast reconstruction.

Background and aims: For patients with biliary tract cancer involving the hepatic hilum, major hepatic resection with extrahepatic bile duct resection may be required. In addition to perihilar cholangiocarcinoma (PHCC), the same extent of surgery is used in advanced gallbladder cancer (GBC) and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (IHCC) with hilar involvement. Few studies compare prognostic factors and long-term outcomes across tumor types. This study compared risk characteristics and outcomes after surgery in all subtypes of biliary tract cancer with hilar involvement.

Methods: Patients with biliary tract cancer with hilar involvement undergoing major liver resection and extrahepatic bile duct resection between 2011 and 2021 at a single center were retrospectively analyzed. The primary postoperative outcome was overall survival. Secondary outcomes were recurrence-free survival and postoperative complications. Survival analysis was performed with Cox regression analysis and Kaplan-Meier method.

Results: One-hundred and eight patients were included. Seventy-three (67%) had PHCC, 24 (22%) had GBC, and 11 (10%) had IHCC. Hilar-invading IHCC and GBC had more adverse histopathological factors like lymph node positivity (p = 0.021), higher number of positive nodes (p = 0.043), and larger tumor size (p < 0.001) compared with PHCC. Peritoneal invasion and lymph node positivity were significant independent predictors for survival (p = 0.011 and p = 0.004, respectively). Median overall survival was 29 months for PHCC, 22 months for GBC and 21 months for IHCC (p = 0.53). IHCC tended to recur earlier (p = 0.046) than GBC and PHCC (6, 15, and 18 months, respectively).

Conclusion: Patients with biliary tract cancer with hilar involvement undergoing major liver resection and resection of extrahepatic bile ducts had similar overall survival regardless of subtype, while IHCC recurred earlier. Peritoneal cancer invasion was common in all subtypes, including PHCC, and was an independent prognostic factor. This finding may support routine reporting of peritoneal invasion-status in resected biliary tract cancer.

Background: Antibiotic therapy is currently considered a safe and effective treatment alternative for computed tomography (CT)-confirmed uncomplicated acute appendicitis with recent studies reporting good results on both oral antibiotics only and outpatient management. Furthermore, there are promising pilot results on uncomplicated acute appendicitis management with symptomatic treatment (placebo). This trial aims to assess whether both antibiotics and hospitalization can be safely omitted from the treatment of uncomplicated acute appendicitis.

Methods: The APPAC IV (APPendicitis Acuta IV) trial is a randomized, double-blind, multicenter noninferiority clinical trial comparing oral moxifloxacin with oral placebo in an outpatient setting with a discharge directly from the emergency room (ER). Adult patients (18-60 years) with CT-confirmed uncomplicated acute appendicitis (absence of appendicolith, abscess, perforation, tumor, appendiceal diameter ⩾15 mm on CT, or body temperature >38 °C) will be enrolled in nine Finnish hospitals. Primary outcome is treatment success at 30 days, that is, the resolution of acute appendicitis resulting in discharge from the hospital without appendectomy during the 30-day follow-up evaluated using a noninferiority design with a noninferiority margin of 6 percentage points. Noninferiority will be evaluated using one-sided 95% confidence interval of proportion difference between groups. Secondary endpoints include postintervention complications, recurrent appendicitis after the 30-day follow-up, duration of hospital stay, admission to hospital and reason for admission, readmissions to emergency department or hospitalization, VAS pain scores, quality of life, sick leave, and treatment costs. The follow-up after discharge from the ER includes a phone call at day 1, and at 3-4 days, 30 days, and 1, 3, 5, 10, and 20 years. Those eligible patients, who decline to undergo randomization, will be invited to participate in a concurrent observational cohort study with follow-up at 30 days, and 1 and 5 years.

Discussion: To our knowledge, APPAC IV trial is the first large randomized, double-blind, noninferiority multicenter clinical trial aiming to compare oral antibiotics and placebo for CT-diagnosed uncomplicated acute appendicitis in an outpatient setting. The study aims to bridge the major knowledge gap on whether antibiotics and hospitalization or both can be omitted in the treatment of uncomplicated acute appendicitis.

Trial registration: The study protocol has been approved by the Clinical Trials Information System (CTIS) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), study number: 2023-506213-21-00 and the trial has been registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT06210269.

Background and objective: The incidence of early-onset colorectal cancer among the young (<50 years) has been reported to have risen in last decades. This retrospective study aimed to investigate the characteristics of early-onset rectal cancers (EO-RCs) and potential changes in proportion of EO-RCs, and further to report the mortality and recurrence rates of EO-RCs.

Methods: In the years 2007-2021, 2557 rectal cancer (RC) patients were operated in Helsinki University Hospital and of them 147 were 18-49 years old. Cumulative overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival, and disease-free survival were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier analysis.

Results: The percentual amount of the EO-RCs varied between 2.5% and 11.3% annually and there was no perceivable trend. Majority were adenocarcinomas (98.7%), of which 8.8% were mucinous. Predisposing factors such as Lynch syndrome, polyposis, or ulcerative colitis were seen in 26 patients (17.7%) and in 10 of 22 patients (45.5%) under 35 years. The cumulative 5-year OS was 91.9% in stage I, 93.3% in stage II, 86.7% in stage III, and 50.0% in stage IV disease. Metastatic recurrence was found in 22 cases (18.4%) and local recurrence in 8 patients (5.4%) and 6 patients had both.

Conclusions: In our cohort of 147 EO-RC patients, OS was good and the clinical course did not seem to differ much from the course of RC in general population.

Background and aims: Psoas muscle parameters estimated from computed tomography images, as surrogates for sarcopenia, have been found to be associated with post-interventional outcomes after a wide range of cardiovascular procedures. The pre-interventional assessment in patients undergoing invasive treatment for peripheral arterial disease is increasingly often carried out with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and we therefore sought to investigate the predictive potential of MRI-derived psoas muscle area in this cohort.

Methods: A total of 899 patients with available sufficient quality pre-interventional MRI conducted within 6 months prior to treatment undergoing open, endovascular, or hybrid revascularization procedures for claudication and/or limb-threatening ischemia at Tampere University hospital between 2010 and 2020 were retrospectively studied in this single-center cohort study. The follow-up lasted until 17 June 2021. Psoas muscle areas were measured from the magnetic resonance images at the L4 level, and the reliability of muscle parameter measurements was tested with intraclass correlation coefficient analysis. The average psoas muscle area values (mean of left and right psoas surface areas) were z-scored and analyzed separately for men and women.

Results: The median follow-up time was 5.9 years (interquartile range (IQR) = 2.7-7.8), and the overall mortality count was 259 (28.8%) (29.5% n = 168/569 for men and 27.6% n = 91/330 for women). The intraclass correlation coefficient analysis showed excellent interrater reliability for psoas muscle measurements. The muscle surface areas were larger in men (mean = 7.58 cm²) compared to women (mean = 5.27 cm²) (p < 0.001). Higher psoas muscle area was associated with better survival in women (p = 0.003, hazard ratio (HR) = 0.71, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.6-0.9 per 1 SD), whereas in men, an independent association of the muscle parameter with mortality was not found.

Conclusions: MRI-derived psoas muscle area may be a prognostic factor for clinical use.