Imaging features of electric scooter trauma: what an emergency radiologist needs to know.

Electric scooters have become very popular over the past five years. However, their growing popularity and their easy availability are strongly related to an increasing number of injuries. These accidents are more common among young people and typically occurred during the night. The great majority of patients admitted to an emergency department receive at least one imaging examination, which commonly is an X-ray or a computed tomography scan. In electric scooter trauma, the head, maxillofacial region, and upper and lower extremities are more vulnerable than the thoracoabdominal region and spine. Among fractures, the nasal bone, radius and tibia are most involved. Intracranial injuries are rare but are an important cause of disability and possible death. Although most patients with electric scooter trauma are discharged home, these accidents often require outpatient follow-up and sometimes hospitalization. Due to the growing number of this type of trauma, it is important for an emergency radiologist to know the pattern of injuries.

Degenerative and Vascular Fluent Aphasia: Looking for Differences.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether the characteristics of language disorders of degenerative and vascular aphasias depend on the underlying neuropathology. METHODS: Logopenic variant/mixed primary progressive aphasics (lvmPPA; n=18) and poststroke fluent aphasics (PSA; n=11) underwent a neuropsychological examination and an assessment of the macro- and microlinguistic aspects of language. A principal component analysis and a cluster analysis applying a two-group solution were performed on the scores obtained from the neuropsychological and language examination. RESULTS: Global cognition, lexical-semantic, and morphosyntactic components, and two components loading macrolinguistic variables, were extracted by the principal component analysis. A first cluster of 18 participants (14 lvmPPA and 4 PSA) and a second cluster of 11 participants (4 lvmPPA and 7 PSA) were identified. Participants in the first cluster were significantly more impaired than those in the second cluster in global cognition, lexical-semantic, and morphosyntactic components. Macrolinguistic components did not differentiate the two clusters. lvmPPA in the first cluster showed bilateral cortical thinning (greater on the left), whereas lvmPPA in the second cluster showed atrophy only in the left. Participants with PSA in both clusters showed vascular lesions encompassing the posterior left perisylvian regions. Underestimation of the severity of the leukoencephalopathy and damage of the interhemispheric connectivity might be responsible for the inclusion of PSA individuals in the first cluster, despite a unilateral lesion. CONCLUSIONS: Lesion localization is the main factor that determines the characteristics of aphasic deficits. Etiology indirectly acts through a different sensitivity of the brain regions to various pathologies.

Imaging Review of Pelvic Ring Fractures and Its Complications in High-Energy Trauma.

Pelvic ring fractures are common in high-energy blunt trauma, especially in traffic accidents. These types of injuries have a high rate of morbidity and mortality, due to the common instability of the fractures, and the associated intrapelvic vascular and visceral complications. Computed tomography (CT) is the gold standard technique in the evaluation of pelvic trauma because it can quickly and accurately identify pelvic ring fractures, intrapelvic active bleeding, and lesions of other body systems. To properly guide the multidisciplinary management of the polytrauma patient, a classification criterion is mandatory. In this review, we decided to focus on the Young and Burgess classification, because it combines the mechanism and the stability of the fractures, helping to accurately identify injuries and related complications.

Case Report: Multifocal Tubercular Osteomyelitis of the Spine and Bilateral Dactylitis.

We report a case of a 13-year-old immunocompetent male with multifocal tubercular osteomyelitis involving several spinal segments, small bones of the hands, and the scalp, who started with progressively back pain and enlarging painful swelling on the palms of hands, fatigue, and irregular fever. All the hand lesions were firm, mildly tender, and covered by ulcerated skin with serous discharge from the site. Magnetic resonance showed lesions of the right fifth metacarpal, of the right intermediate phalanx of the fourth finger, of the left second metacarpal, and of most vertebral bodies of the cervical, dorsal, lumbar, and sacral spine. The nucleic acid amplification test and the final culture from the drainage of the hands' lesion were positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The patient received a standard antitubercular treatment for 12 months with clinical improvement.

Acute cerebellar stroke and middle cerebral artery stroke exert distinctive modifications on functional cortical connectivity: A comparative study via EEG graph theory.

OBJECTIVE: We tested whether acute cerebellar stroke may determine changes in brain network architecture as defined by cortical sources of EEG rhythms. METHODS: Graph parameters of 41 consecutive stroke patients (<5 days from the event) were studied using eLORETA EEG sources. Network rearrangements of stroke patients were investigated in delta, alpha 2, beta 2 and gamma bands in comparison with healthy subjects. RESULTS: The delta network remodeling was similar in cerebellar and middle cerebral artery strokes, with a reduction of small-worldness. Beta 2 and gamma small-worldness, in the right hemisphere of patients with cerebellar stroke, increase respect to healthy subjects, while alpha 2 small-worldness increases only among patients with a middle cerebral artery stroke. CONCLUSIONS: The network remodeling characteristics are independent on the size of the ischemic lesion. In the early post-acute stages cerebellar stroke differs from the middle cerebral artery one because it does not cause alpha 2 network remodeling while it determines a high frequency network reorganization in beta 2 and gamma bands with an increase of small-worldness characteristics. SIGNIFICANCE: These findings demonstrate changes in the balance of local segregation and global integration induced by cerebellar acute stroke in high EEG frequency bands. They need to be integrated with appropriate follow-up to explore whether further network changes are attained during post-stroke outcome stabilization.