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Background and Objectives: Sarcopenia is an objective measure of patient frailty and is a predictor of adverse surgical outcomes. We hypothesized that sarcopenia is associated with increased surgical site occurrence (SSO) and hernia occurrences in patients undergoing oncologic abdominal wall reconstruction., Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent abdominal wall reconstruction (AWR) for an abdominal wall ablative defect at a single center from 2005 to 2015 were evaluated. The total psoas index (TPI) was used to define sarcopenia. The primary endpoint of the study was hernia occurrence; (SSO) was a secondary outcome measure., Results: Eighty-six patients met the inclusion criteria. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that sarcopenia increased the risk of hernia more than threefold, trending toward significance (OR = 3.3; 95% CI: 0.69-15.4; P = .13). Multivariate logistic regression demonstrated that preoperative radiotherapy (OR = 4.8, 95% CI: 1.4-16; P = .01) and obesity (OR = 4.9, 95% CI: 1.5-16.3; P =.009) were independent predictors of developing an SSO., Conclusions: Sarcopenia, as defined by TPI, is correlated with hernia occurrence, but not SSO. These findings emphasize the importance of preoperative fitness and nutritional optimization and provide useful information for preoperative counseling and risk stratification., (© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that present as hemoperitoneum are uncommon, often recur as peritoneal carcinomatosis, and have poor prognosis. Systemic chemotherapies are minimally effective in advanced HCC and less so as neo-adjuvant therapy. This report describes a 47-year woman with ruptured HCC who developed recurrent carcinomatosis. She received biologically targeted systemic therapy which resulted in significant radiographic tumor response. Salvage surgery revealed complete pathologic response in all tumor nodules, thus the patient was rendered cancer-free., ((c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)

Background: Altered zinc levels in prostate benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and carcinoma is well documented. It is not known whether loss of zinc, necessary to restrain aggressive growth, results from loss of a single specific or multiple zinc transporters., Methods: Human prostate tissues from patients who underwent radical prostatectomy were screened by RT-PCR analysis for five zinc transporters. Relative cDNA expression was determined in normal, BPH, and tumor specimens and four prostate epithelial cell lines., Results: Surgical specimens were obtained from patients with assigned Gleason scores ranging from 5 to 9. Relative expression of hZIP-1 and hZnT-1 were prominent in most samples with relatively lesser degree of expression of hZIP-2 and no detectable expression of hZnT-3. Expression of hZnT-4 was decreased in BPH and tumor samples compared to normal tissue., Conclusions: These data suggest that zinc homeostasis in normal prostate tissues results from an interplay of multiple transporters and decreased hZnT-4 expression is associated with prostate tissue abnormalities independent of total cellular zinc content., (Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)