Staging disease severity in pathologically confirmed cases of XXXX .

@entity1 @entity303 @entity194 @entity4943 @entity204
OBJECTIVE: To devise a staging scheme for addressing the severity of @entity194 in @entity1 with pathologically proven @entity4943 ( @entity4943 ) and determine any relationship with clinical indices. METHODS: Twenty-four cases with clinical and pathologic features of @entity4943 were selected using standard inclusion and exclusion criteria from 125 @entity303 cases collected in Sydney, Australia, over an 8.5-year period. Patterns of gross @entity194 were determined in two coronal brain slices. Reproducibility of a four-stage severity scheme was tested. Nonparametric statistics were used to determine relationships between the stage of @entity194 and clinical indices (age at @entity204 , duration from diagnosis, and clinical severity at @entity204 ). RESULTS: The @entity4943 cases studied could be reliably grouped (kappa = 0.97) into four progressively severe stages of global @entity194 . Initial mild @entity194 occurred in the orbital and superior medial frontal cortices and hippocampus (stage 1), progressed to involve the other anterior frontal regions, temporal cortices, and basal ganglia (stage 2), then involved all remaining tissue in these coronal slices (stage 3), until very marked @entity194 was observed in all areas (stage 4). These stages correlated with disease duration and clinical @entity303 severity, lending validity to the progressive nature of the staging scheme. CONCLUSIONS: The authors have identified a reproducible staging system for the severity of gross @entity194 in cases of @entity4943 . This staging scheme provides the required framework to compare different research indices and determine correlates relating to time and disease progression in @entity4943 -information necessary to determine core disease processes and etiologic factors.
