Dengue infection-associated brachial plexopathy: Report of the fi rst case and review of the literature

Brachial plexopathy is an uncommon neurologic disease which is associated with many conditions including infectious and non-infectious conditions. Many viral infections have been reported to be associated with brachial plexopathy. To the best of our knowledge, dengue infection-associated brachial plexopathy has never been reported in the literature. We report here a case of dengue infection complicated by bilateral brachial plexopathy, and also review all reported cases of viral infectionassociated brachial plexopathy in the English literature.

Surgical Maggots

Surgical maggots have been used successfully for wound debridement over the past millennium. At Johns Hopkins University in 1929, Baer introduced maggots into the wounds of 21 patients with chronic intractable osteomyelitis. The development of methicillin-resistant Staphlococcus aureus has been a major impetus to resurgent interest in maggot debridement. In January of 2004, the US Food and Drug Administration gave Dr. Ronald Sherman permission to produce and market surgical maggots for debriding non-healing necrotic skin and soft tissue wounds. Given an uncooperative patient with non-healing wounds, our medical team obtained insectary-reared sterile surgical maggots, Phaenicia sericata, to promote debridement of necrotic tissue and development of granulation tissue.