Investigação das alterações citogenéticas em pacientes pediátricos com leucemia linfóide aguda do Rio Grande do Norte

Leukemia is a heterogeneous group of hematologic malignancies that result from partial or total transformation of the blast cells. The Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is the most common malignancy in childhood, especially in male, Caucasian children younger than 14 years. Several criteria are adopted to classify ALL, including the cell morphology, cytochemistry, immunophenotyping and cytogenetic analysis. Cytogenetic studies allow a more detailed analysis to detect chromosomal abnormalities of leukemic cells. These modifications will determine the diagnosis, classification, stage characterization, remission assessment and prognosis. In this study were evaluated 30 patients, aged from four months to seventeen years, of both sexes and various ethnicities. The age distribution showed that 67% of patients had between one and ten years (with mean age of XX years old), the most prevalent ethnic was Caucasian (50%) and 57% were males. According to immunophenotype, 93% of patients had B-cells progenitor ALL and 7% early lineage T. Considering the total studied population, the most frequent medical findings were lymphadenopathy (37%), hepatomegaly (77%) and splenomegaly (70%), where one patient could present more than one of these medical findings. Regarding the CBC, the majority of patients had hemoglobin below 10 g / dl (73%), leukocyte count less than 10.000/μL (60%) and platelet count below 150.000/μL (83%). Chromosomal abnormalities were observed in 64% of all patients, where hyperdiploidy was the most common numerical change (67%), followed by hypodiploid (33%). All these data are in agreement with the literature. Moreover, complexes structural and/or number changes not yet described in literature were observed, which indicated poor prognosis. Finally, we concluded that this study demonstrated the importance of cytogenetic study in the diagnosis and identification of prognostic factors in pediatric patients with ALL in Rio Grande do Norte. The results obtained in this study are extremely useful and emphasizes that surveys of this nature must be conducted more frequently in our state

Assistência a mulher com câncer de mama em um cenro de referência no Estado da Paraíba

The assistance to women who have breast cancer is studied in a Reference Center in Paraiba and also the way this assistance is performed in a School Hospital maintained by SUS (Single Health System) is questioned. Breast cancer demands institutional organization, provision of financial, material and human resources, requiring, from the health system, effective assistance with new technologies which make it possible for the population their access to specialized medical services although it not always is able to guarantee those services nor the rights which the legislation granted them, inhibiting a proper relationship between the health professional and the patient. The theme is discussed through a transdisciplinary knowledge view and has as its theoretical referential the contribution of classical and contemporary authors from the human and social sciences and, as an empirical research strategy, the structured interview. The objectives of the research were: identify how the assistance to women with breast cancer is carried on at a Reference Center on Oncology in Campina Grande, Paraiba, identifying their difficulties and their satisfaction with the received assistance; draw up a profile of the women with breast cancer who were assisted in this Reference Center; understand their gynecological and obstetric antecedents, life styles, age group and stage of the disease when the treatment started; check their knowledge about their rights and which benefits they had received. Most women ranged between 40 and 59 years old (63%), which corresponds to the risk range of developing breast cancer. As to their occupations, 38.3% were housewives and 30.1% retired, whose family income was among those who received between less than a minimum salary and one minimum salary (58.2%). This population was mainly constituted of married women (60.2%), whose most frequent schooling was an incomplete elementary school (27.6%) and complete elementary school (24.1%), which added up to 51.6%. It was observed that the majority of the women seemed to be satisfied with the assistance received, noting that a minimum care was enough to define this satisfaction, although it is perceived that the access to the health system does not ensure the ideal attention conditions they need; it was verified that the availability of the services and the assistance itself are seen (in the local culture) as a favor and not as a right. It is also observed that only 30% of the women mentioned that they knew about their rights and the most mentioned ones were the disease assistance (13%), the medicines (13%) and the treatment (12%), which represent the most important triad to face the disease and around which the oncologic assistance most focus on. It is concluded that the condition of the users´ minimum existential of a public health unit and the condition of belonging to a lower social stratum were variables that influenced the respondents´ satisfaction in relation to the assistance received but the importance of the Reference Center for the women with breast cancer´s assistance for the whole region cannot be denied as well as the need to broaden the way the policy of the oncologic assistance in Brazil in the local realm is seen