Treatment of a transorbital penetrating injury: a particular endovascular approach.

The management of craniocerebral penetrating injury currently represents a challenge for neurosurgeons and neuroradiologists and requires innovative planning. This report describes the case of a worker admitted to hospital with an intracranial piece of concrete-cutting saw stuck through the right eye. At the time of admission the patient was conscious and this fact influenced the choice of a particular approach. This patient escaped without neurological deficit or complications, except for the inevitable removal of an eye.

Palmaz stent dislodgement into the left pulmonary artery complicating TIPS: percutaneous retrieval and extraction after venotomy.

A Palmaz stent had dislodged into the left pulmonary artery after TIPS. After transfemoral catheterization of the left pulmonary artery, the stent was retrieved into the right femoral vein employing an angioplastic balloon catheter and finally extracted after surgical venotomy.

[Percutaneous gastrostomy. Personal experience in 137 cases]. / La gastrostomia percutanea. Esperienza personale in 137 casi.

Percutaneous gastrostomy is reported to be an effective alternative to total parenteral feeding or long-term nasogastric tube in the treatment of mechanical or functional dysphagia. The authors report their personal experience with 137 percutaneous gastrostomies performed on 98 men and 39 women from January 1986 through December 1993. All the maneuvers were performed under fluoroscopic guidance in the patients with head or neck cancer, neoplastic, vascular or post-traumatic neuropathy and upper GI tract cancer. To avoid left hepatic lobe trauma, percutaneous gastrostomy needs to be performed under US guidance. A 7F nasogastric tube is used to fill the stomach with air. After distending the gastric cavity, with the Seldinger technique under local anesthesia, fascial dilators of progressively increasing caliber are introduced into the gastric cavity and the final 12F gastrostomy catheter is positioned under fluoroscopic guidance. No major complications, such as hemorrhage or peritonitis, occurred. In one case, during the maneuver, the patient complained of severe epigastric pain which regressed with no further problems two hours later. In three cases the gastrostomy catheter fell out of place and was replaced by running the fistolous tract with a venous cannula and then a guidewire for gastrostomy repositioning. With this type of treatment, the patient can be given enteral feeding the following day. The maneuver requires approximately 10 minutes to perform and is well tolerated by the patient as it requires no general anesthesia. Percutaneous gastrostomy is more cost-effective than surgery or endoscopy and hospitalization is shorter. The only contraindications to this maneuver are hepatomegaly (because of the risk of liver trauma during percutaneous maneuvers), ascites (because of the risk of infection) and finally the complications resulting from gastric resection.