Conservative management of a large occipital extradural haematoma.

A 26-year-old male presented with a mild confusion and hemianopsia after traumatic brain injury. Cerebral CT-scan revealed a 62.5 cm(3) left occipital extradural haematoma (EDH). Although conventional neurosurgical management would have been to evacuate the haematoma, a conservative strategy was preferred, and the patient made a total recovery.

The Dural Dark-Side Approach for falcine and tentorial meningioma: A surgical series of five patients.

INTRODUCTION: Falcine or tentorial meningioma can be complex to resect. When large meningiomas are located in eloquent areas, a direct ipsilateral surgical approach may cause brain injury and postoperative neurological deficits. In this series, 5 patients were surgically treated using a contralateral transfalcine or transtentorial approach to minimize brain retraction. This strategy was called the Dural Dark-Side Approach (DDSA). The aim was to analyze the quality of tumor resection and postoperative outcome. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In our department, from June 2018 to January 2020, 5 patients underwent microsurgical DDSA for resection of 4 falcine and 1 tentorial meningioma. All tumors were selected on the following two criteria: large>40mm diameter tumor, with surrounding functional cortex. Clinical and radiologic data were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Mean follow-up was 20 months. No patients required use of a rigid retractor during surgery. Gross total resection was performed in 3 patients and near-total resection in 2. All patients had favorable neurologic outcome. Postoperative MRI showed no ipsilateral or contralateral brain lesions. CONCLUSION: This series suggested that meticulous DDSA allows excellent resection in selected large falcine or tentorial meningioma. The approach offered a safe and effective surgical corridor without injuring the surrounding healthy parenchyma.

Follow-up monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance in kidney transplant.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this work was to review the incidence of monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and complications in kidney transplant (KT) patients at the Puerta del Mar Hospital in Cádiz, Spain. This diagnosis was not considered to be a contraindication for transplantation. METHODS: To estimate the incidence of MGUS in KT patients we used the database of our hospital, which included 1,016 patients who received a KT from 1992 to 2012 with a median follow-up of 30 months. The incidence of MGUS in non-transplant patients was estimated from the literature. RESULTS: Out of 1,016 KT patients, 16 developed MGUS; 10 (72.5%) were >50 years old. Two patients developed post-transplantation lymphoproliferative disorders. No cases of progression to multiple myeloma or amyloidosis were seen during immune suppression therapy or after. CONCLUSIONS: MGUS was >100 times more frequent in KT recipients than in the general population (P < .05). But in contrast to MGUS in general population, progression to plasma cell dyscrasia in these patients was absent and its incidence is unknown in KT patients.

Effect of continuous cerebrospinal fluid drainage on therapeutic intensity in severe traumatic brain injury.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) was to assess the effectiveness of continuous cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) drainage in controlling intracranial pressure (ICP) and minimizing the use of other ICP-lowering interventions potentially associated with serious adverse events. METHODS: We studied 20 TBI patients. In each patient, we compared four consecutive 12-hour periods covering the 24 hours before CSF drainage (NoDr1 and NoDr2) and the 24 first hours of drainage (Dr1 and Dr2). During each period, we recorded ICP, cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP), sedation, propofol infusion rate, and number of hypertonic saline boluses. RESULTS: With continuous CSF drainage, ICP decreased significantly from 18 ± 6 mmHg (NoDr1) and 19 ± 7 mmHg (NoDr2) to 11 ± 5 mmHg (Dr1) and 12 ± 7 mmHg (Dr2). CPP increased significantly with drainage. Drainage led to a significant decrease in the number of hypertonic saline boluses required for ICP elevation, from 35 in 16 patients (80%) (NoDr1/2) to eight in five patients (25%) (Dr3/4). Drainage was not associated with changes in the midazolam or sufentanil infusion rates. The propofol infusion rate was non-significantly lower with drainage. No significant differences in serum sodium, body temperature, or PaCO(2) occurred across the four 12-hour periods. CONCLUSION: CSF drainage may not only lower ICP levels, but also decreases treatment intensity during the 24 hours following EVD placement in TBI patients. Because EVD placement may be associated with adverse event, the exact role for each of the available ICP-lowering interventions remains open to discussion.

Multiparametric analysis of apoptotic and multi-drug resistance phenotypes according to the blast cell maturation stage in elderly patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous group of malignant diseases, often characterized by coexistence of more than one subpopulation of blast cells. Multiparametric flow cytometry immunophenotyping has proven to be a reliable and sensitive approach for the discrimination of myeloid blast cells from residual normal cells present in bone marrow samples from AML patients and, at the same time, allows the identification of different maturation compartments among myeloid blasts. Therefore, it provides a unique tool for assessing apoptotic and multidrug resistance (MDR)-associated phenotypes in individual subsets of leukemic cells. DESIGN AND METHODS: The aim of the present study was to explore the simultaneous expression of proteins related to both apoptosis (APO2.7, bcl-2, bax) and multidrug resistance (MDR1, MRP, LRP) in the different blast cell subpopulations detected at diagnosis in a group of 72 elderly patients with AML. In addition, we included 5 bone marrow samples from healthy adult donors in the analysis. RESULTS: Immature blast cells (CD34+: subset I) showed a significantly higher level of bcl-2 expression (p <0.0001) together with a lower reactivity for APO 2.7 (p=0.02) as compared to the other more mature CD34- cell subsets. The expression of Bax parallelled that of APO 2.7, although the difference between immature CD34+ blast cells and the mature blast cell subsets did not reach statistical significance (p=0.18). These results translated into a significantly (p<0.0001) higher bcl-2/bax ratio for the CD34+ blast cells as compared to that of the two CD34- blast cell subpopulations. Regarding the expression of the multidrug resistance-associated proteins Pgp and MRP, CD34+ blast cells displayed a greater expression of both proteins as compared to the more mature CD34- AML blast cells, but differences according to maturation stage of AML blast cells did not reach statistical significance. In contrast, LRP expression was significantly lower in the more immature CD34+ blast cell subset than in the more mature ones (p=0.01). INTERPRETATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS: As far as normal bone marrow is concerned our results suggest that all blast cell subpopulations are more protected from apoptosis than their normal counterparts. We conclude that in elderly patients with AML the more immature blast cells are more resistant to apoptotic processes, which could explain why, when AML relapses, the blast cells frequently display a more immature phenotype than that observed at diagnosis. Contradictory results in multidrug resistance profile support the hypothesis that failure to respond to chemotherapeutic drugs in AML is a multifactorial phenomenon.

Determinantes familiares de la inteligencia emocional de los escolares / Family determinants of emotional intelligence of school children

Establecer los determinantes familiares de la inteligencia emocional (ie) de los escolares. Diseño de casos y controles. Los casos y los controles fueron seleccionados entre 55 niños. Los casos se definieron como aquellos niños que tuvieran un puntaje de ie menor de 120 según la escala de chiriboga y franco. Las características familiares incluyeron: estratificación social, ingresos, hacinamiento, funcionalidad, composición, demografía, desarrollo, integración y tipología; el sexo y la edad se incluyeron como posibles factores de confusión. Los datos se analizaron por medio de regresiones múltiples, de tipo lineal y logístico. El puntaje promedio de ie fue de 101,06 ± 18,78 y 36,36 por ciento de los niños (n = 20) presentaban puntajes bajos de ie. Cinco variables se relacionaron de manera significativa con los puntajes de ie en el modelo de regresión lineal (r2 = 0,74): sexo, clase social, desarrollo familiar, integración familiar y tipología familiar. El modelo logístico no aportó resultados significativos. Los factores familiares son determinantes cruciales de la ie en los escolares; por lo tanto, cualquier intervención dirigida al desarrollo de la ie debe orientarse al mejoramiento de las condiciones de la familia.