Neurosurgery
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Review Case Reports
Proposal for the Rapid Reversal of Coagulopathy in Patients with Nonoperative Head Injuries on Anticoagulants and/or Antiplatelet Agents: A Case Study and Literature Review.
Emergency room physicians, trauma teams, and neurosurgeons are seeing increasing numbers of head-injured patients on anticoagulants, many of whom are nonoperative. Head injury and anticoagulation can lead to devastating consequences. These patients need immediate evaluation and often reversal of anticoagulation in order to decrease their high rates of morbidity and mortality. ⋯ There are very few guidelines for the management of nonoperative head-injured patients. Rapid reversal guided by international normalized ratio values, Platelet Function Assays, computed tomography imaging of the head, and physical exam is suggested. The proposal presented in this paper enables patient management to begin quickly in a systematic approach, with the goal of achieving a significant decrease in the morbidity and mortality for the anticoagulated head-injured patient. Rapid reversal can potentially decrease mortality by as much as 38%.
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Mesiotemporal lobe epilepsy is one of the most frequent causes for pharmacoresistant epilepsy. Different surgical approaches to the mesiotemporal area are used. ⋯ Different surgical approaches for mesiotemporal epilepsy analyzed resulted in similar epileptological, neuropsychological results, and complication rates. Therefore, the approach for the individual patient does not only depend on the specific localization of the epileptogenic area, but also on the experience of the surgeon.
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Moyamoya disease causes progressive occlusion of the supraclinoidal internal carotid artery, and middle, anterior, and less frequently the posterior cerebral arteries, carrying the risk of stroke. Blood flow is often partially reconstituted by compensatory moyamoya collaterals and sometimes the posterior circulation. Cerebral revascularization can further augment blood flow. These changes to blood flow within the cerebral vessels, however, are not well characterized. ⋯ Preoperative changes in cerebral vessel flow as measured by NOVA correlated with angiographic disease progression. NOVA demonstrated that preoperative augmentation of the posterior circulation decreased after surgery. This report is the first to quantify the shift in collateral supply from the posterior circulation to the bypass graft.
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Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are multipotent stem or stromal cells found in multiple tissues. Intravenous MSC injections have been used to treat various diseases with an inflammatory component in animals and humans. Inflammation is emerging as a key component of pathophysiology of intracranial aneurysms. Modulation of inflammation by MSCs may affect sustained inflammatory processes that lead to aneurysmal rupture. ⋯ Intravenous administration of MSCs after aneurysm formation prevented aneurysmal rupture in mice. The protective effect of MSCs against the development of aneurysm rupture appears to be mediated in part by the stabilization of mast cells by MSCs.