Malignant Hyperthermia: A Case Study in the Dental Ambulatory Surgery Setting.

Historically, patients who developed malignant hyperthermia had an extremely high rate of mortality. Today, if treated appropriately, patients who experience an episode of malignant hyperthermia will most likely survive. This dramatic decrease in mortality associated with malignant hyperthermia is due to several factors, including an increased understanding of the disease, improved diagnostic and monitoring equipment, and the development of lifesaving pharmacologic agents. This article presents the very likely case of acute malignant hyperthermia in a 24-year-old man with special needs, who presented for restorative dentistry under general anesthesia in the outpatient clinic of The Ohio State University's College of Dentistry.

Tube Decompression for Staged Treatment of a Calcifying Odontogenic Cyst-A Case Report.

The calcifying odontogenic cyst is a rare developmental odontogenic lesion with a distinguishing cystic lining containing "ghost" epithelial cells. The variation in clinical, radiographic, and histologic findings makes the treatment decision difficult for these lesions. There are very few reports on treatment, with enucleation and curettage being the standard surgical method of choice for the cystic type and excision of the tumor for the solid type. A 2-stage surgical approach consisting of initial decompression with tube placement followed by a secondary procedure of enucleation and curettage is common for other large odontogenic cysts, such as dentigerous and odontogenic keratocysts. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first case managed with an intended 2-stage approach in the form of decompression followed by enucleation and curettage.

Lateral tarsotomy: a practical alternative to lateral canthotomy to increase orbital access.

OBJECTIVE: Transconjunctival approach to the lower one-third of the orbit is commonly used to avoid transcutaneous incisions when surgical access is needed. A lateral canthotomy is used in conjunction with this approach if increased lateral exposure is required. A major disadvantage to lateral canthotomy is difficulty in resuspension of the lateral canthal tendon, which can lead to unaesthetic outcomes. The present report describes two cases of lateral tarsal incision or, as we decided to call it, the "lateral tarsotomy" technique. This simple approach is used to increase lateral access to the orbit without the need for lateral canthotomy. STUDY DESIGN: Two patients presented with internal orbital wall trauma that required repair; access was achieved with a transconjunctival approach in conjunction with lateral tarsotomy. The patients were followed up at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months to document the development of possible unaesthetic and poor functional outcomes. RESULTS: Excellent cosmetic results were observed, with no noticeable deformity at the tarsotomy site. There was no evidence of ectropion, entropion, scleral show, and visible scars. CONCLUSIONS: The above results suggest that the lateral tarsotomy approach is a practical alternative to lateral canthotomy when increased lateral exposure is required.

Significance of circulating tumor cells in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck: initial results.

OBJECTIVES: to present and discuss a high-performance negative depletion method for the isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood of patients with head and neck cancer and to determine the correlation between the presence of CTCs and early clinical outcome in these patients. DESIGN: prospective clinical follow-up study of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) undergoing surgical intervention, who had peripheral blood examined for the presence of CTCs. PATIENTS: the study population comprised 48 patients diagnosed as having SCCHN and undergoing surgical intervention. INTERVENTION: a negative depletion process to isolate and quantify CTCs from the blood of patients with SCCHN using immunomagnetic separation was developed and validated. Immunostaining for cytokeratin was performed on the enriched samples to determine the number of CTCs extracted from each patient's blood sample. Correlation of the presence of CTCs, tumor stage, nodal status, clinical characteristics, and outcome was made. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: disease-free survival. RESULTS: our initial data, that have a mean follow-up of 19.0 months, suggest that patients with no detectable CTCs per milliliter of blood had a significantly higher probability of disease-free survival (P = .01). There was no correlation between the presence of CTCs with regard to age, sex, tumor site, stage, or nodal involvement. CONCLUSIONS: our enrichment technology, based on the removal of normal cells, has been used on the peripheral blood of patients with head and neck cancer for which follow-up data were collected. If no CTCs were present, a statistically significant improved disease-free survival was observed in SCCHN. A blood test with such a prognostic capability could have important implications in the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer.