European neurology
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Cervical artery dissection (CAD) accounts for up to one fifth of ischemic strokes occurring before 45 years. Their increasing recognition is probably due to an increased clinical awareness of this condition in patients with painful ischemic events. The internal carotid artery is the most commonly affected vessel. ⋯ This noninvasive approach can be obtained by means of CT scan, MRI, magnetic resonance angiography and ultrasonography, although angiography remains the gold standard for the diagnosis of arterial dissections. Follow-up studies suggest a fairly good overall prognosis in adults and in children. In many centers, CAD are treated by heparin at the acute stage, although the benefit of such a potentially dangerous treatment has never been proven by a randomized trial.
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Early determination of outcome after out-of-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation is a common problem with great ethical, economic, social and legal consequences. Although there has been a fulminant development of emergency medicine during the last three decades, severe cerebral damage sometimes cannot be avoided. For neurological outcome prediction after cardiac arrest clinical neurological signs, electrophysiological examinations, neuroimaging tests, and laboratory parameters in serum and cerebrospinal fluid are used today, nevertheless, there still remains a considerable degree of uncertainty. However, although prognostic criteria which enable the clinician to stop treatment cannot be given at the present time, useful applications of early prognostication after cardiac arrest range from counseling of families, triage decisions, and do-not-resuscitate decisions to future clinical investigations of brain resuscitative measures.
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All studies concerning the detection of patent foramen ovale (PFO) have compared transthoracic or transesophageal echocardiography (c-TEE) to transcranial Doppler ultrasound after contrast injection (c-TCD), but combining both techniques in the search of PFO has received no consideration. Our study aims to substantiate this claim in 37 patients with cryptogenic stroke. It includes two protocols for the detection of PFO to assess the complementarity of c-TCD and c-TEE performed simultaneously or separately. ⋯ The degree of right-to-left interatrial shunting varied according to the protocol: c-TCD performed alone found 15 massive, 4 intermediate and 5 minimal shunts whereas 10, 9 and 5, respectively, were detected by c-TCD when it was combined with c-TEE. In contrast, c-TEE revealed 8 massive, 8 intermediate and 8 minimal shunts. c-TCD can identify minimal shunts missed by c-TEE and could be more relevant to detect massive shunts, particularly when not performed simultaneously with c-TEE because no sedation is required for c-TCD alone as opposed to c-TEE: thus patients are more cooperative and produce a better Valsalva strain. c-TEE confirms pulmonary shunts suspected by c-TCD and determines the morphologic characteristics of the interatrial septum. While previous studies opposed c-TEE against c-TCD for the detection of a PFO, we think that both techniques are complementary and that it is interesting to associate them, particularly when they are deferred, to increase the ability of detecting PFO and to specify the degree of right-to-left shunting.
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Fifty-three UK and 59 USA people with multiple sclerosis (MS) answered anonymously the first questionnaire on cannabis use and MS. From 97 to 30% of the subjects reported cannabis improved (in descending rank order): spasticity, chronic pain of extremities, acute paroxysmal phenomenon, tremor, emotional dysfunction, anorexia/weight loss, fatigue states, double vision, sexual dysfunction, bowel and bladder dysfunctions, vision dimness, dysfunctions of walking and balance, and memory loss. The MS subjects surveyed have specific therapeutic reasons for smoking cannabis. The survey findings will aid in the design of a clinical trial of cannabis or cannabinoid administration to MS patients or to other patients with similar signs or symptoms.