0000000000435340
AUTHOR
Pierfrancesco Pugliese
Painful scar neuropathy: principles of diagnosis and treatment
Nerve-tissue interactions are critical. Peripheral nerve injuries may involve intraneural and extraneural scar formation and affect nerve gliding planes, sometimes leading to complex clinical presentations. All of these pathological entities involve pain as the main clinical symptom and can be subsumed under the term "painful scar neuropathy". The authors review the literature on treatment approaches to peripheral nerve scar neuropathy and the outcomes of neurolysis-associated procedures and propose a simple classification and a therapeutic approach to scar neuropathy. The search retrieved twenty-one papers, twenty of which reported pain reduction or resolution with various techniques. Ther…
SARS-CoV-2 infection and venous thromboembolism after surgery: an international prospective cohort study
SARS-CoV-2 has been associated with an increased rate of venous thromboembolism in critically ill patients. Since surgical patients are already at higher risk of venous thromboembolism than general populations, this study aimed to determine if patients with peri-operative or prior SARS-CoV-2 were at further increased risk of venous thromboembolism. We conducted a planned sub-study and analysis from an international, multicentre, prospective cohort study of elective and emergency patients undergoing surgery during October 2020. Patients from all surgical specialties were included. The primary outcome measure was venous thromboembolism (pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis) within 30 da…
Irreversible changes occurring in long-term denervated Schwann cells affect delayed nerve repair.
OBJECTIVEMultiple factors may affect functional recovery after peripheral nerve injury, among them the lesion site and the interval between the injury and the surgical repair. When the nerve segment distal to the lesion site undergoes chronic degeneration, the ensuing regeneration (when allowed) is often poor. The aims of the current study were as follows: 1) to examine the expression changes of the neuregulin 1/ErbB system during long-term nerve degeneration; and 2) to investigate whether a chronically denervated distal nerve stump can sustain nerve regeneration of freshly axotomized axons.METHODSThis study used a rat surgical model of delayed nerve repair consisting of a cross suture betw…
DJ-1 mutations and parkinsonism-dementia-amyotrophic lateral sclerosis complex.
Mutations in DJ-1 gene have been recently shown to cause autosomal recessive early-onset Parkinson’s disease (EOPD) in a large Dutch family and in a small consanguineous Italian family.1 Subsequent to this initial finding, several additional DJ-1 mutations were identified in subjects with EOPD.2–6 We describe a family from southern Italy with three brothers affected by a complex disorder characterized by early-onset parkinsonism-dementia-amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (EOPD-D-ALS). The analysis of the DJ-1 gene showed a novel homozygous mutation (E163K) in exon 7 and a novel homozygous mutation (g.168_185dup) in the promoter region of this gene in living affected subjects