Insights into Avicenna's contributions to the science of surgery

The evolution of cancer immunotherapy: a comprehensive review of its history and current perspectives

Cancer immunotherapy uses the body's immune system to combat cancer, marking a significant advancement in treatment. This review traces its evolution from the late 19th century to its current status. It began with William Coley's pioneering work using bacterial toxins to stimulate the immune system against cancer cells, establishing the foundational concept of immunotherapy. In the mid-20th century, cytokine therapies like interferons and interleukins emerged, demonstrating that altering the immune response could reduce tumors and highlighting the complex interplay between cancer and the immune system. The discovery of immune checkpoints, regulatory pathways that prevent autoimmunity but are exploited by cancer cells to evade detection, was a pivotal development. Another major breakthrough is CAR-T cell therapy, which involves modifying a patient's T cells to target cancer-specific antigens. This personalized treatment has shown remarkable success in certain blood cancers. Additionally, cancer vaccines aim to trigger immune responses against tumor-specific or associated antigens, and while challenging, ongoing research is improving their efficacy. The historical progression of cancer immunotherapy, from Coley's toxins to modern innovations like checkpoint inhibitors and CAR-T cell therapy, underscores its transformative impact on cancer treatment. As research delves deeper into the immune system's complexities, immunotherapy is poised to become even more crucial in oncology, offering renewed hope to patients globally.

Contributions of Avicenna to surgery and anesthesiology

Background: Avicenna, as the Persian physician has had a great contribution to the field of medical sciences, especially surgery in 10th and 11th centuries AD.Methods: In the present paper, a few translated quoted words of Avicenna were shared about his surgical practice. Indexing databases of PubMed and Google Scholar were searched using the keywords like Avicenna, surgery, and anesthesiology to find related papers and documents.Results: The first portion comprises of some most commonly used simple and compound herbal preparations to produce general and local anesthetics before the surgery and as dental anesthetic agents. In the second portion, practices regarding surgical management for skull fractures, spinal trauma, bone fracture, cataract, incurable urinary retention, bladder calculi, hemorrhoids, cancer as well as endotracheal intubation and tracheostomy have also been incorporated. Finally, it ends up with practices regarding the use of natural products as postoperative dressing for traumatic and surgical wounds and after cataract surgery.Conclusion: Findings of this review study will provide a brief insight on Avicenna's Canon of Medicine to the sciences of anesthesiology and surgery based on the recent investigations.