Four patients with Graves' disease in whom antithyroid drugs could not be used were treated by plasmapheresis preoperatively. On admission all patients had severe hyperthyroidism. All patients were treated by beta blockers, cholestyramine and inorganic iodine before plasmapheresis. Plasmapheresis course consisted of three sessions. Removed plasma was replaced by a synthetic colloid solution and human albumin other than fresh-frozen plasma. Plasmapheresis led to decreases in serum T3 concentrations >78-40% and free T4 concentrations >69%. Near-total thyroidectomy could be performed in all patients. Although screening coagulation tests were within normal limits, patients 1 and 4 experienced more blood loss than usual during the operative procedure. Plasmapheresis could be used as an alternative therapeutic option in the preoperative management of severe hyperthyroid patients with contraindications to antithyroid drugs. However, this is an invasive procedure and patients should be followed carefully for prolonged clinic/subclinic coagulopathy due to plasma exchange.

AIM: To investigate the relationship between reflux and body mass index (BMI) in the asymptomatic obese population using the impedance-pH technique. METHODS: Gastroesophageal reflux is frequent in the obese population. However, the relationship between acid reflux and BMI in asymptomatic obese people is unclear. Forty-six obese (BMI > 25 kg/m²) people were enrolled in this prospective study. We evaluated the demographic findings and 24-h impedance pH values of the whole group. Gas, acid (pH < 4), weak acid (pH = 4-7) and weak alkaline (pH ≥ 7) reflux parameters were analyzed. RESULTS: The mean age of patients was 49.47 ± 12.24 years, and half of them were men. The mean BMI was 30.64 ± 3.95 kg/m² (25.14-45.58 kg/m²). BMI of 23 was over 30 kg/m². Seventeen patients had a comorbidity (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, or ischemic heart disease). Endoscopic examination revealed esophagitis in 13 of the 28 subjects (10 Grade A, 3 Grade B). The subjects were divided into two groups according to BMI (< 30 and > 30 kg/m²). Demographic and endoscopic findings, and impedance results were similar in these two groups. However, there was a positive correlation between BMI and total and supine pH < 4 episodes (P = 0.002, r = 0.414; P = 0.000, r = 0.542), pH < 4 reflux time (P = 0.015, r = 0.319; P = 0.003, r = 0.403), and DeMeester score (P = 0.012, r = 0.333). CONCLUSION: Acid reflux is correlated with BMI in asymptomatic obese individuals.

Purpose: We aimed to compare the diagnostic performance of ⁶⁸Ga-FAPI-04 (FAPI) in comparison to ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATATE (SSTR) PET/CT for patients presenting with recurrent medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). Patients and Methods: Sixteen MTC patients with elevated calcitonin levels (>150 pg/mL) underwent FAPI and SSTR PET/CT. Two nuclear medicine physicians evaluated all images, categorizing lesions into locoregional metastases, mediastinal lymph nodes (LNs), liver, and bone metastases. SUV_max and tumor-to-background ratio were recorded. PET modalities were compared using the McNemar test. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of FAPI and SSTR PET were calculated. Results: The cohort comprised 16 patients (50% female; mean age 50 ± 17 years). Median calcitonin and CEA levels were 6234 pg/mL and 17.3 ng/mL, respectively. In patient-based analysis, SSTR exhibited higher diagnostic sensitivity compared with FAPI (88% vs 81%), resulting a statistically significant difference (P = 0.004). Mean SUV_max and tumor-to-background ratio values were 10.3 and 5.35 for FAPI, and 9.7 and 11.9 for SSTR PET, respectively. In lesion-based analyses, FAPI demonstrated higher accuracy than SSTR for cervical LNs (91.9% vs 50%), mediastinal LNs (94.9% vs 54.4%), and liver metastases (57.4% vs 7.3%), respectively. Notably, 31% of patients (n = 5) with FAP-expressing liver lesions showed no uptake on SSTR imaging. MRI confirmed liver metastases in 3 of these patients; however, 2 FAP-expressing lesions were confirmed as hemangiomas. False-positive findings of DOTA primarily included reactive LNs and bone hemangiomas. Conclusions: FAPI PET presents promising outcomes in detecting metastases in recurrent MTC patients. Although its diagnostic performance matches SSTR on a per-patient basis, FAPI PET exhibits superior sensitivity and accuracy in lesion-based analyses, notably for liver and bone metastases.

The endocrinological complications are a great concern in transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia (β-thal) patients. The pituitary iron deposition is regarded as the main cause of hormonal changes in thalassemic patients. In this study, our aim was to explore the association between endocrinological complications and pituitary iron overload by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Fifty transfusion-dependent thalassemia (TDT) patients were recruited for the study. Pituitary MRIs of patients were taken using a 1.5 Tesla Philips MRI machine. There was at least one clinical endocrine complication in two of three patients. The iron accumulation was moderate in the liver (60.0%) and was mild in hypophysis (16.0%) and in heart (8.0%). The hypogonadism and diabetes mellitus (DM) were not seen with a significantly increased pituitary iron burden. The hypogonadism was related to cardiac iron deposition (p = 0.04). The short stature was associated with a hepatic iron overload (p = 0.05). The conventional follow-up of patients with TDT might be inadequate and screening of patients with MRI of hypophysis along with heart and liver leads to better results.