A two-year experience with laparoscopic cholecystectomy--a report of 1475 cases from Kunming, China

Over a 2-year period, from 12 September 1991 to 11 September 1993, laparoscopic cholecystectomy was performed on 1475 patients with benign gallbladder disease in Kunming General Hospital, Yunnan, China. Of these, 28 cases (1.9%) were converted to open surgery. Various complications were documented in 27 instances including extrahepatic bile duct injury in 4 cases (0.3%), postoperative haemorrhage requiring laparotomy in 3 cases (0.2%) and bile leak from cystic duct stump in 1 case (0.07%). There was 1 (0.07%) death in the series. The junction between the gallbladder infundibulum and the cystic duct is an important landmark which laparoscopic surgeons must identify in the course of the procedure. Because the junction remains a comparatively constant landmark, in difficult laparoscopic cholecystectomy, excessive dissection of the bile duct would be unnecessary. During dissection of the hepatic hilus, blund dissection is recommended and the blind use of cautery and haemostasis should be avoided.

Purification and characterization of hedgehog liver metallothioneins

Two forms of liver metallothioneins (MTs) were purified from hedgehog exposed to zinc, using gel filtration on Sephacryl S-100 and DEAE Sepharose Fast Flow chromatography. The peptide chain weight of both MT-1 and MT-2 was found to be about 10,000, as determined by high performance liquid chromatography. This value was higher than that calculated from amino acid analysis. The amino acid composition of hedgehog liver MT-1 and MT-2 resembles that of liver to MTs from rabbit and other species. Their distinctive features include an extremely high cysteine content, about 33% of all the amino acid residues, and an absence of aromatic amino acids and histidine. In addition, a rapid method for the determination of MTs during animal tissue purification has been established. The samples were directly added in an ammoniacal solution of a Co(II) salt for recording linear sweep polarograms. By comparison with the commonly used metal determination method, our method is direct, rapid, credible and suitable for all the MTs or MT-like samples.

[Acute toxicity of flesh oil of Hippophae rhamnoides L. and its protection against experimental hepatic injury]

Protection by flesh oil of Hippophae rhamnoides against hepatotoxicity induced by CCl4 and acetaminophen (AAP) is reported in this paper. It was found that the oil markedly inhibited MDA formation of liver induced by CCl4 and AAP, decreased sGPT levels induced by CCl4 and blocked depletion of GSH damaged liver induced by AAP.LD50 greater than 45.0 g/kg.