Artifacts, anatomical and physiological variants, and unrelated diseases that might cause false-positive whole-body 131-I scans in patients with thyroid cancer.

The whole body 131-I scan remains an important component in the postoperative treatment of patients with well-differentiated thyroid cancer. Because normal thyroid tissue remnants and residual or metastatic foci of well-differentiated thyroid cancer have the unique ability to concentrate, organify, and store 131-I, the whole body scan provides a depiction of those tissues that can be ablated with therapeutic doses of 131-I. Over time, it has become obvious that the whole body scan may also reveal foci of 131-i uptake owing to a wide variety of other causes. We provide a detailed pathophysiological classification of the artifacts, anatomic and physiological variants, and nonthyroidal diseases that may give rise to false-positive whole body scans in postoperative patients with thyroid cancer. These include ectopic foci of normal thyroid tissue; nonthyroidal physiological sites (eg, choroid plexus, salivary glands, gastric mucosa, urinary tract); contamination by physiological sections; ectopic gastric mucosa; other gastrointestinal abnormalities; urinary tract abnormalities; mammary abnormalities; serous cavities and cysts; inflammation and infection; nonthyroidal neoplasms; and currently unexplained causes. This article also provides a detailed review of the widely scattered English language literature in which these phenomena were originally described.

Towards one dental world: systems and formatting for the electronic dental journal.

This paper discusses systems and format guidelines that can be used as a basis for evolving an agreement for publishing dental journal material on a compact laser read only memory (CD-ROM) disc.

The electronic journal for dentistry.

Electronic publishing is expanding very rapidly and will soon substitute in part for the traditional role of paper and printing in accessing information and in its library storage. This change is occurring now for medicine and engineering. For dentistry the compact disc (CD-ROM) would have advantages over tape or on-line computer systems; one or two discs a year could hold all current dental journal and textbook literature. The setting of standards is the key to the successful introduction of this technology through production and playback systems. Indexing, retrieval and hardware are considered as well as copyright problems. The profession has the chance to guide the introduction of this publishing system in preference to it being fragmented between multiple publishers and thereby becoming costly. A proposal is offered which includes the nexus of traditional printing with this new publishing form through a forum for considering standards and goals for agreement on principles.