Tuberculosis of sternum: three cases with different presentations.

Sternum is resistant to infections and thus infrequent site of osteomyelitis. Involvement of sternum by Mycobacterium tuberculosis is rare. We report case of 37-year-old male with isolated tuberculosis of the sternum, a 14-year-old girl with tuberculosis of the sternum and Potts spine and a 55-year-old male with tubercular sinus of the sternum, three different presentations of the same disease.

Phenytoin induced severe disabling osteomalacia in a young male with seizure disorder.

While the use of anti epileptic drugs (AEDs) for a long period is a known risk factor for bone loss and pathological fractures, yet the physicians are not yet sensitized to this possibility. It is now believed that the patients who have fractures due to long-term treatment with anticonvulsants have osteomalacia as the predominant lesion. This has been attributed to the alterations in the levels of circulating calcium and calcitropic hormones. Here we report a case of a young male who had been on anticonvulsants for 11 years and was admitted with us with severe bone pains, multiple pathological pseudo fractures and a severe degree of disability secondary to phenytoin induced osteomalacia.