Late calcification and rupture: a rare complication of ventriculoperitoneal shunting.

A 10-year old boy who had undergone a ventriculoperitoneal (V/P) shunt because of hydrocephalus at 10 days of age was doing well until 20 days ago, when he began to experience headache and seizures. CT scan revealed dilated lateral ventricles and calcification at the shunt site. X-rays showed an unusual calcification pattern around the shunt tube and rupture of the tube between the mastoid bone and clavicle. The patient underwent surgery and the shunt was changed completely. The ventricles became small in the follow-up. Even though V/P shunts may induce fibrous tissue formation and calcification around the tube, there are a few cases of shunt rupture and calcification of shunts in the literature. Possible mechanisms of the rupture and calcification are discussed in this paper.

Cerium nitrate treatment prevents progressive tissue necrosis in the zone of stasis following burn.

Cerium nitrate (CN) was used as a topical antiseptic agent for the treatment of burn wounds and found to reduce the number of anticipated death in burn. This decreased burn related mortality cannot be explained by the control of wound infection alone. In the studies performed to elucidate the unexplained effects of CN treatment, it was shown that CN treatment reduced the alarm cytokine levels, decreased leukocyte activation, reduced macromolecular leakage and finally burn edema formation. We hypothesized that CN treatment prevents the conversion of the zone of stasis to progressive tissue necrosis by decreasing leukocyte activation and reducing macromolecular leakage and burn edema. This was investigated on a well-described burn comb model in the rats. Fifty-four rats were randomly divided into control and CN treatment groups. Each rat in CN treatment group received 0.04 M CN bathing 30 min after burn whereas rats in control group received 0.09% saline bathing. Viability of zone of stasis is assessed with (99 m)Tc-sestamibi scintigraphy. Nine rats in each group were scintigraphically evaluated at the 3rd and 7th day after burn and remaining 9 rats had macroscopic and histological examination at the 21st day after burn to confirm the scintigraphic results. In CN treatment groups, the scintigraphic uptake ratios were higher both at post burn day 3rd and 7th when compared to that of control groups. This was statistically significant (p≤0.05). In the CN treatment group, the results of the average percentage of the re-epithelialization in the zone of stasis were higher than that of control groups. The difference between the groups was also statistically significant (p≤0.05). These results were accepted that CN treatment prevents progressive tissue necrosis in the zone of stasis. This study further elucidates the unexplained effects of CN treatment on burn.

Extracranial metastases of anaplastic oligodendroglioma.

Extracranial metastasis of a malignant glioma is rare, possibly due to the lack of lymphatic drainage in the brain and because these tumors are unable to penetrate blood vessels. Extracranial metastasis of an anaplastic oligodendroglioma (ODG) is exceptionally rare. We present a 55-year-old male patient with diffuse extracranial metastases from a temporal anaplastic ODG, 11 months after cranial surgery. Anaplastic ODG, may spread to the other parts of the body. If patients with these tumors have neck or back pain, spinal metastasis should be included in the differential diagnosis and further investigated.