Israel Medical Association Journal

Background: The mainstay of therapy for acute cholecystitis is cholecystectomy, which has a mortality of 14–30% in high risk patients. An alternative approach in patients suffering from acute cholecystitis with contraindications to emergency surgery is percutaneous cholecystostomy.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of percutaneous cholecystostomy as the initial treatment of acute cholecystitis in high risk patients.

Methods: Eighty consecutive patients (42 men, 38 women) underwent ultrasound-guided percutaneous cholecystostomy over a 5 year period. Sixty-five patients suffered from acute calculous cholecystitis, 4 patients had acalculous cholecystitis, and 11 patients had sepsis of unknown origin.

Results: Sixty-eight patients improved after the percutaneous gallbladder drainage, 10 patients died from co-morbid disease and 2 patients died from biliary peritonitis. During a 1 year follow-up, 32 of the patients underwent interval cholecystectomy, 4 additional patients died from a co-morbid disease, 18 patients did not suffer from any gallbladder symptoms, and 14 were lost to follow-up.

Conclusions: Percutaneous cholecystostomy is an effective contribution to the treatment of acute cholecystitis in high risk patients.

Background: Intestinal malrotation is usually observed in the neonatal period with signs of acute high intestinal obstruction due to midgut volvulus. However, malrotation presenting beyond the neonatal period and well into adult life is associated with a variety of atypical and frequently non-specific gastrointestinal symptoms that may often cause prolonged delay in diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

Objectives: To emphasize the difficulty in predicting the risk of midgut volvulus based on age or symptoms, and to recommend surgery in all patients found to have intestinal malrotation even if they are considered asymptomatic.

Methods: We reviewed 41 patients with malrotation treated over a period of 24 years at the Soroka University Medical Center.

Results: In our series, 27 patients (66%) had acute midgut volvulus while 14 (34%) had malrotation found during investigation of various long-term gastrointestinal non-specific symptoms. Two patients died of total parenteral nutrition-related sepsis following extensive resection of small bowel. A total of 28 patients was available for long-term follow-up and are asymptomatic.

Conclusions: We recommend elective laparotomy and Ladd procedure in all patients found to have intestinal malrotation. This will prevent the catastrophic results of midgut volvulus and a variety of gastrointestinal symptoms wrongly attributed to other conditions in the span of a lifetime.

Background: Chronic nicotine administration has a dual effect on inflammatory bowel disease: augmentation of jejunitis and amelioration of colitis. We previously showed that chronic nicotine administration has divergent regional effects on small bowel and colonic mucosal mediators and blood flow.

Objective: To examine the effects of nicotine administration on cytokine levels in normal rat small bowel mucosa, colonic mucosa, and blood.

Methods: Male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 200–250 g were given nicotine (12.5 μg/ml) that was dissolved in tap water. Rats were sacrificed on days 1, 2, 7 and 14 after nicotine initiation; blood was withdrawn, and small bowel and colon were resected, washed and weighed. Mucosal scrapings were extracted in 2 ml Krebs-Hemselest buffer for determination of interleukins-2, 6 and 10 using the Biosource International Immunoassay Kit.

Results: Nicotine decreased IL-10[1] and increased IL-6 levels in small bowel mucosa (from 3.5 ±  0.5 to 0.4 ± 0.1 pg/ml and from 1.9±0.4 to 13.6±0.4 pg/ml respectively; P < 0.05). Nicotine decreased IL-2 levels in the colon (from 15.8±3.0 to 7.9±1.0 pg/ml; P < 0.05), having no effect on IL-10 or IL-6 levels. Rats treated with nicotine had lower IL-6 and IL-2 blood levels compared to control rats.

Conclusions: Nicotine has different regional effects on small bowel and colonic cytokine mucosal levels, which might explain some of its opposite effects on small bowel and colonic inflammation.

Behavioral genetics is the identification of behavioral traits that are genetically determined, the identification of the genes that are involved, and the discovery of modes of intervention to alter the expected course of the disease. Unlike the classical Mendelian traits, many specific aspects of behavior are, in part, determined by several genes. The corresponding abnormalities of behavior or deficiencies are therefore polygenic. New genetic techniques are leading to the discovery of these genes, and the techniques and knowledge developed in the Human Genome Project make it possible to screen the genome of any individual for the presence of known polymorphisms. This raises great hopes for diagnosis and the individualization of therapy. However, the genetic prediction of unacceptable behavior can further lead to social and occupational discrimination and enforced therapy. This raises serious concerns about how this information will be collected and who will have access to it.