Journal of clinical neuroscience : official journal of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia
-
Case Reports
Intradural extramedullary arachnoid cyst of the thoracic spine associated with cord compression.
In this report, a 55-year-old Caucasian women with an arachnoid cyst of the thoracic spine is presented. This cyst remained undiagnosed because of the nonspecific nature of her symptoms over approximately three months. ⋯ Surgery was successful with respect to in-toto removal of the intradural, extramedullary cyst, reversal of cord compression and symptoms. Histological diagnosis was of an arachnoid cyst.
-
Comparative Study
Comparative neuroprotective effect of sodium channel blockers after experimental spinal cord injury.
Spinal cord injury (SCI) results in loss of function below the lesion. Secondary injury following the primary impact includes a number of biochemical and cellular alterations leading to tissue necrosis and cell death. Influx of Na(+) ions into cells has been postulated to be a key early event in the pathogenesis of secondary traumatic and ischemic central nervous system injury. ⋯ Although all the treatment groups revealed significantly lower MDA levels and spinal cord edema than the trauma group (p<0.05), the riluzole and mexiletine treatment groups were better than the phenytoin treatment group. In the chronic stage, riluzole and mexiletine treatment achieved better results for neurobehavioral and histopathological recovery than phenytoin treatment. In conclusion, all the tested Na(+) blockers had a neuroprotective effect after SCI; riluzole and mexiletine were superior to phenytoin.
-
To assess the surgical and hardware complications in 26 consecutive patients with movement disorders undergoing subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) in early practice at our institute. ⋯ The associated morbidity is significant in STN-DBS. The use of MER may improve the clinical outcome while decreasing the morbidity.
-
Pregnancy and puerperium raise the risk of thrombotic events, and these risks are likely to be increased in women who are carriers of thrombophilic gene polymorphisms. Prothrombin G20210A variant is reported to be the second most frequent prothrombotic polymorphism in Caucasians. Our aim was to determine the prevalence of this variant in south Indian women and examine its association with cerebral venous and sinus thrombosis occurring during puerperium. ⋯ The prothrombin G20210A variant was not detected in either the CVT patients or the healthy control subjects. Our study on a large series of patients with puerperal CVT shows that the prothrombin G20210A variant is not present in south Indian women and is not associated with puerperal CVT. This study also highlights the fact that there are racial differences in the risk factors for thrombosis, which should be considered when investigating these patients.
-
We report an unusual case of epidural hematoma secondary to the use of a three-point skull-fixation device. Initially, a posterior-fossa brain tumor with hydrocephalus was diagnosed in a 15-year-old boy. Midline suboccipital craniectomy was performed with the patient placed in the prone position. A Mayfield (Ohio Medical Instrument Co., Cincinnati, OH, USA) skull clamp was used for fixation of the head during the surgical procedure, following which, a huge epidural hematoma developed within 6 hours of surgery, due to skull penetration and fracture at one of the clamp's pin sites located proximate to the coronal suture.