Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0220723 (PCA)
 4,687 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Critically ill cancer patients may present special problems. Often these patients are terminally ill and mortality in a critical care unit devoted to cancer patients is higher than in other units. Sedation becomes paramount in the treatment of these patients. Some techniques may be inappropriate, such as epidural narcotics in a patient who is thrombocytopenic from chemotherapy. Drug pharmacokinetics are ill defined in these patients who often have liver and renal failure either resulting from tumor or chemotherapy. As the number of available drugs increases, interactions among these drugs become more important. Very little investigations has been done with the drugs we used everyday in the ICU. One should carefully titrate medication to effect--not rely on standard dosage regimens that have been primarily determined in relatively healthy patients. Combinations of techniques are being used, such as PCA with epidural narcotic administration with short acting, lipid soluble narcotics. Nerve blocks, primarily intercostal for chest trauma, were used in the past, but the requirement for frequent reinjection has made them less desirable. Recently thoracic paravertebral block has been used successfully for 9 to 10 hour pain relief with chest trauma. With this armamentarium of techniques and drugs, the critical care physicians should be able to go a long way to relieve pain and suffering of patients in the ICU.
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PMID:Sedation and pain management for the critically ill. 246 65

A 73-year-old man was admitted into the hospital because of lumbago in October, 1986. Laboratory examination on admission showed anemia, an IgA-kappa Bence Jones proteinemia. The bone marrow picture disclosed a marked involvement by the neoplastic cells, followed by leukemic conversion 2 weeks later. The leukemic cells displayed a lymphoblastoid appearance on light microscopy, but rather compatible with plasma cells on electron microscopy, showing some strands of rough endoplasmic reticulum and a prominent Golgi apparatus in the cytoplasm. The cells expressed a wide spectrum of surface markers, including those of plasma cell (PCA-1, OKT10), B cell (B1, sIg) and CALLA. Reverse hemolytic plaque assay disclosed the immunoglobulin production of monoclonal kappa chain, but a heavy chain production was recognized only in a small proportion of the cells. Under the diagnosis of multiple myeloma, he was treated with vincristine, cyclophosphamide, and prednisolone. But he died of renal failure complicating hypercalcemia after only three months of the admission in accordance with previous reports that CALLA-positive myeloma was associated with poor prognosis. This case may also represent the clinical, morphological and phenotypic diversity in multiple myeloma.
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PMID:[CALLA-positive leukemic multiple myeloma of IgA-kappa type]. 250 77

With a quantitative blood endotoxin assay using a chromogenic substrate with a perchloric acid pretreatment (PCA-LCT), endotoxemia in various liver diseases was studied. With PCA-LCT, recovery of added endotoxin in human plasma was nearly 90%, as evidenced by an intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variation of 5.7% and 11%, respectively. Because the recovery of endotoxin was not affected in severely icteric plasmas, PCA-LCT proved to be applicable to patients with liver diseases where various degree of jaundice exist. In none of the plasmas from patients with chronic hepatitis, acute hepatitis without hepatic failure or liver cirrhosis without ascites did the endotoxin level exceed the normal range of less than 5 pg/ml. With the presence of ascites, however, endotoxemia became detectable, but at low levels and not in all cases. At the stage of hepatic failure complicated with renal failure or disseminated intravascular coagulation, endotoxemia was more frequent and endotoxin concentration greater. It is uncertain, at present, whether endotoxemia itself is deteriorating factor in hepatic failure or is merely concomitant phenomenon resulting from Kupffer cell failure.
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PMID:Endotoxemia in liver diseases: detection by a quantitative assay using chromogenic substrate with perchloric acid pretreatment. 300 75

A case of plasma cell leukaemia of non-producer type is described. The patient presented with typical clinical features of plasma cell myeloma, including multiple osteolytic lesions, hypercalcaemia, renal failure and reduced polyclonal immunoglobulins, except that M-component was not detected in either the serum or urine. Morphological examinations showed a plasmacytoid appearance of the neoplastic cells, while immunological studies failed to detect cytoplasmic immunoglobulin or secretory capacity. The surface phenotype of CD38+, PCA-1+, DR-, CD20-, CD24-, CD9-, CD10- and surface immunoglobulin- was compatible with mature plasma cells. Chromosomal analysis showed the 14q+ marker due to translocation (6;14) and deletion of the short arm of chromosome 1. Analysis of immunoglobulin genes revealed the presence of heavy chain gene rearrangement, but the light chain genes, both kappa and lambda, remained in germline configuration. Such defective immunoglobulin gene rearrangement may be responsible for the failure of immunoglobulin biosynthesis and secretion by the neoplastic plasma cells. Furthermore, it is suggested that the morphological and phenotypic development of B cells may not necessarily depend on immunoglobulin light chain gene rearrangement, and that the oncogenic event in myeloma may occur at an earlier stage of B cell differentiation.
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PMID:Plasma cell leukaemia of non-producer type with missing light chain gene rearrangement. 313 42