Klemens B. Meyer, Jerome P. Kassirer – 1 March 1987 – Clinicians frequently perform tests to determine whether patients have liver metastases. Optimal use of a laboratory test requires that the clinician know the test's operating characteristics (its sensitivity and specificity) and have an estimate of the pretest probability that disease is present. We have surveyed studies that examined the value of four biochemical and three imaging tests in establishing a diagnosis of hepatic metastases in patients who underwent an invasive procedure to establish the presence or absence of disease.

1 March 1987

1 March 1987

Ingemar Björkhem, Sverre Skrede, Marie S. Buchmann, Cara East, Scott Grundy – 1 March 1987 – Evidence was recently presented that an essential part of the accumulation of cholestanol in patients with cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis is due to acceleration of a novel pathway, involving 7α‐hydroxylated intermediates in bile acid biosynthesis as precursors (J. Clin. Invest. 1985; 75:448–456). Such intermediates accumulate in patients with cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis due to lack of the mitochondrial 26‐hydroxylase involved in the major pathway for bile acid biosynthesis.

Sow‐Hsong Kuo, Jin‐Chuan Sheu, Ding‐Shinn Chen, Juei‐Low Sung, Chi‐Chung Lin, Hey‐Chi Hsu – 1 March 1987 – The nuclear DNA contents of 54 hepatocellular carcinomas were measured on cytologic smears using a scanning microdensitometer at a wavelength of 550 nm. The cellular materials were aspirated under ultrasonographic guidance and stained with modified Feulgen method. The DNA modal values, which could be defined in 51 cases, ranged from 2.2 to 9.8 ploidy, with 46.3% (25/54) in hypertetraploidy.

Igal Kam, Steven Lynch, Gregory Svanas, Satori Todo, Lorenzo Polimeno, Antonio Francavilla, Ronald J. Penkrot, Sunichi Takaya, Bo G. Ericzon, Thomas E. Starzl, David H. Van Thiel – 1 March 1987 – Orthotopic liver transplantation was performed in two groups of dogs; Group I animals consisted of large dogs that served as recipients of livers obtained from smaller dogs while Group II animals consisted of dogs that received liver from donor dogs of nearly the same size.

G. Ananda Rao, Edward C. Larkin – 1 March 1987

L. Frederick Fenster, Harold O. Conn – 1 March 1987 – A young man with chronic active hepatitis was heavily sedated during an attempted transjugular liver biopsy. The procedure was abandoned after 3 h and an immediate percutaneous liver biopsy was performed. This showed features of chronic active hepatitis but, in addition, groups of poly‐morphonuclear leukocytes in the parenchyma. These were similar to the operation associated neutrophils encountered in liver biopsies taken during the course of abdominal surgery.

David F. Ransohoff – 1 March 1987 – We investigated the natural history of cholelithiasis in 59 samples of stones from the gallbladder or common bile duct in 15 patients, using as a tracer for the timing of stone formation the 14C released into the environment during nuclear weapons testing. The ages of the stones were correlated with the dates of onset of symptoms and with other clinical data.

J. P. Colombo – 1 March 1987 – Portacaval shunt (PCS) operations were performed on male inbred SD rats. The activity of liver γ‐glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT) increased a few days after the operation and remained high after several months. However, the activity was only present in periportal areas of liver lobules and was mainly restricted to the endothelial lining cells of periportal blood vessels. Phenobarbital sodium (CAS: 57–03–7) administration did not change the distribution of GGT.