Vol 20, No 3 (2015)

Today the role of single or double Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation (ASCT) in patients (pts) with refractory Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) is still unclear. Aim. To present the results of a single-center prospective trial which aim was to show the significance of single and double ASCT in patients with HL, who did not achieve complete response after first-line chemotherapy. Material and Methods. Between 2007 and 2014 62 patients were enrolled in the study. First ASCT was administered to 53 patients, 10 of those 53 patients received second ASCT. Results. 5-year overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PS) were 52 and 27% after single ASCT versus 38 and 30% after double ASCT respectively. According to our study extensive previous treatment (radiotherapy and chemotherapy) followed by ASCT had a negative prognostic impact on overall survival (OS) (p=0.03). Moreover, initial response to the first ASCT was found to be an independent prognostic factor of OS (p=0.004). According to our results, achievement ofpartial response or disease stabilization after the first ASCT was the main indication for double ASCT. In this case second ASCT is preferable to alternative treatment (p=0.004). Disease progression (PD) after the first ASCT seems to be a contraindication to the necessity of the second course of ASCT as low effectiveness and high level of toxicity do not improve treatment results in comparison to alternative treatment (p=0.6). Achievement of complete remission associated with disease free long-term survival and high quality of life. Achievement of complete remission was crucial at any treatment stage. Conclusion. ASCT is an effective treatment option for patients who never achieved CR. Second ASCT is a treatment of choice for patients with PR/SD after 1st ASCT. Nevertheless second ASCT does not improve outcome for patients with PD after 1st ASCT. Alternative variants of treatment are needed for this patient group.

This study is an ex-vivo comparison of images obtained by probe-based confocal endomicroscopy (pCLE) examination of lung cancer samples and light microscopy specimens prepared from the same samples. This first ex-vivo study revealed endomicroscopic characteristics of different types of lung carcinoma.

This articlepresents the study of prognostic significance of bcl-2 apoptosis inhibitor expression in renal cell carcinoma. Operation samples of 59 patients with renal cell carcinoma were studied. Average age of patients was 56,6 ± 1,3 years. 31 (52,5 %) were men , 28 (47,5 %)-women . Correlations were found between bcl-2, clinical cancer stage (r = 0,31; р = 0,02), size of tumor node (r = 0,29; р = 0,02), regional and distant metastasis ( r = 0,35; р = 0,005) and histologic tumor type (r = 0,41; р = 0,002). No correlation was found with patients ’ sex (r = 0,16; р = 0,22), age (r = 0,17; р = 0,22) and tumor grade by Furman (r = 0,19; р = 0,15). Absence of bcl- 2 expression in tumor cells can be considered as a marker of possible metastases. The results showed correlation between the marker expression and overallsurvival was. Low level of bcl-2 oncoprotein expression in tumor cells is apoorprognostic factor of fatient’s survival.

The design of working scheme of errors in diagnostics of respiratory system diseases that lead to delayed establishment of the thoracic diagnosis (later than 14 days after the first visit to the doctor) involved the following: incorrect interpretation of clinical data (23.1% to 48.9%), poor performance status ofpatients, which prevented examination (2.0% to 6.4%), method limitation (2.0% to 13.9%), incorrect interpretation of X-ray diagnostics data (45.9% to 62.8%), inadequate physician’s qualification (16.4% to 43.2%), violation of standard examination (91.0% to 100.0%), low quality of X-ray images (15.7% to 34.8%), inadequate examination method (38.6% to 53.8%), difficult case (4.4% to 20.5%).

Studying tumor and metastasis biology is an important challenge of both biology and medicine, since only an experiment may reveal fine mechanisms of pathogenesis. We analyzed the dynamics of serum hormones in a model of rat liver metastates designed by our group, which excluded toxic carcinogen effects, sharp surgical influence and narcosis. The results showed that liver metastases were associated with the following: 1) hyperthyroidism developing at early stages of metastatic process was replaced by latent hypothyroidism after 5 weeks of the carcinogenesis as a result of autoimmune thyroiditis; 2) the increase of progesterone, LG and prolactin levels after 5 weeks of tumor metastasis in liver after the 2 weeks ’ initial decrease; 3) sexual hormones metabolism activation: after a week - increase offree testosterone level, after 2 weeks -rise of estrone and total testosterone and the decrease of estrogen levels after 5 weeks of carcinogenesis; 4) adrenal gland activation leading to the enhancement of serum stress hormone corticosterone and its antagonist DHEA.