BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening healthcare systems and hospital operations on a global scale. Treatment algorithms have changed in general surgery clinics, as in other medical disciplines providing emergency services, with greater changes seen especially in pandemic hospitals. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the follow-up of patients undergoing emergency surgery in our hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional study conducted in a tertiary-level public hospital. METHODS: The emergency surgeries carried out between March 11 and April 2, 2020, in the general surgery clinic of a tertiary-care hospital that has also taken on the functions of a pandemic hospital, were retrospectively examined. RESULTS: A total of 25 patients were included, among whom 20 were discharged without event, one remained in the surgical intensive care unit, two are under follow-up by the surgery service and two died. Upon developing postoperative fever and shortness of breath, two patients underwent thoracic computed tomography (CT), although no characteristics indicating COVID-19 were found. The discharged patients had no COVID-19 positivity at follow-up. CONCLUSION:The data that we obtained were not surgical results from patients with COVID-19 infection. They were the results from emergency surgeries on patients who were not infected with COVID-19 but were in a hospital largely dealing with the pandemic. Analysis on the cases in this study showed that both the patients with emergency surgery and the patients with COVID infection were successfully treated, without influencing each other, through appropriate isolation measures, although managed in the same hospital. In addition, these successful results were supported by 14-day follow-up after discharge.

Ific mammography and ultrasound findings, they cannot be distinguished from fibroadenomas through these imaging methods and are mostly followed up as if they are fibroadenomas. Patients often present with the complaint of a mass that has been present for a long time and had started to grow suddenly. The primary preferred approach for treatment is wide local excision with negative surgical margins. Coexistence of invasive ductal carcinoma with phylloides tumor in the same breast is a very rare occurrence. We present in this article, a 42-year-old female patient with an invasive ductal carcinoma inside a phylloides tumor in the same breast....

Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) are central to treatment planning for colorectal cancer liver metastases (CRCLM) but require time and consistent access to expertise. Chat-based large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT can generate recommendations from written clinical summaries; however, their concordance with MDT decisions in CRCLM is not well characterized. We conducted a single-center retrospective concordance study of 30 consecutive CRCLM cases discussed at an MDT. ChatGPT was provided a standardized anonymized text synopsis (without direct imaging access) and asked for management recommendations under two a priori conditions: (1) baseline synopsis only, and (2) a conditional query in which resectability status was explicitly specified. Each case and condition was queried three independent times in separate sessions using identical prompts; outputs were mapped to predefined management categories. Agreement between the final LLM recommendation and MDT decisions was assessed using percent agreement and Cohen’s kappa. Across repeated runs, the LLM assigned the same management category in all cases (within-model consistency 100%, 3/3) for both querying conditions. In the baseline condition, agreement with MDT decisions was 66.7% (20/30; Cohen’s kappa = 0.606, moderate agreement). In the conditional resectability-specified condition, agreement was 93.3% (28/30; Cohen’s kappa = 0.924, very good agreement). Baseline discordant cases were characterized by conservative model outputs, including recommendations for systemic therapy and/or additional diagnostic work-up; only two cases remained discordant after resectability was specified. A chat-based LLM showed moderate concordance with unanimous MDT recommendations from minimal case summaries and very good concordance when resectability status was explicitly specified. These findings support feasibility as a supervised decision-support adjunct, but do not establish clinical benefit; prospective outcome-based validation is required.

Introduction In July 2012, the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society updated their guidelines on gastroenterological endoscopy in patients undergoing antithrombotic therapy, although the safety of endoscopic procedures in patients receiving antithrombotic drugs has yet to be sufficiently...

Background: The impact of high-risk surgery on tissue perfusion can be indirectly assessed by measuring lactate levels during surgery and intensive care unit (ICU) stay. While consistently high values are associated with poor prognosis, transient elevations do not mean poor clinical outcomes. Therefore, intraoperative and early postoperative blood lactate monitoring is essential for cancer patients. Aims and Objective: This study aimed to determine the risk factors of persistently elevated lactate levels in the intraoperative and postoperative period in patients with elective gastric cancer surgery. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively enrolled 293 patients who underwent curative resection for gastric cancer. Lactate values of all patients were examined during surgery and ICU-stay at 3rd, 6th, 12th, and 18th hours. All lactate values above 2 mmol/L were considered elevated. The patients were divided into two groups as those with perioperative persistently increased lactate levels and those without. Results: Of the 293 patients, 60 (20.5%) had higher lactate levels in the perioperative period. According to multivariate logistic regression analysis, the operative time had the highest significance rate (p = 0.020) out of two significant variables, followed by the BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2 (p = 0.048). Besides, patients with perioperative hyperlactatemia had prolonged hospital stays (p = 0.034). Conclusions: Operative time and obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) were independent risk factors for persistent lactate elevation in the perioperative period. Also, perioperative hyperlactatemia extended the length of hospital stay.