Tako Tsubo cardiomyopathy in a patient with antiphosholipid syndrome secondary to systemic lupus erythemathosus (SLE).

Tako Tsubo cardiomyopathy is rare, stress related and indistinguishable from acute myocardial infarction clinically. Proper diagnosis is essential to avoid unnecessary thrombolysis and life long management of coronary artery disease.

Acculturation and emotion among Asian Americans.

This study examined the emotion experience of Asian Americans in relation to respondents' orientation to acculturation: Assimilation, Integration, Separation, or Marginalization (J. W. Berry, 1980). Ego- versus other-focused emotion experiences (H. R. Markus & S. Kitayama, 1991) and attention and valence, 2 stages in P. C. Ellsworth's (1994) model of emotion appraisal, were used to investigate the relation between acculturation and affect. Asian Americans most and least assimilated to the dominant Anglo American culture were expected to exhibit emotion responses correspondingly similar to and different from those of Anglo Americans. Those with a bi-cultural or integrationist trajectory should occupy a middle ground in terms of emotional experience. Compared with the appraisal process, ego- versus other-focused emotions, mediated in part by one's self-construal (e.g., independent or interdependent), were more strongly associated with acculturation orientation in the expected directions. The implications of recognizing the influence of acculturation on the emotional meaning of life encounters of newcomers are discussed in light of community psychology and clinical practice.

Purtscher-like retinopathy after retrobulbar injection.

Purtscher-like retinopathy occurred in a 46-year-old Chinese male who received 5 mL of 2% lignocaine, retrobulbar injection, and underwent pterygium excision with conjunctiva graft. The visual acuity improved spontaneously from 20/120 on the first postoperative day to 20/20 within 8 weeks. The disc swelling, veinous tortuosity, retinal whitening, and hemorrhage resolved with time. However, relative afferent papillary defect and an arcuate visual field deficit persisted. The mechanisms of this Purtscher-like retinopathy are postulated.

The use of sodium hyaluronate as a lubricant in brow suspension ptosis surgery using polyester fiber mesh.

Polyester fiber is used as an alternative to autologous fascia lata for brow suspension ptosis surgery. The authors found it difficult to pass the polyester compound through the submuscular plane during brow suspension surgery. They used sodium hyaluronate as a lubricant to aid the passage of polyester fiber mesh. In 14 cases of brow suspension surgery with polyester fiber mesh, the authors found sodium hyaluronate to be useful in reducing tissue resistance and without untoward effect.

Quantitation of mitomycin C in human ocular tissues by high-performance liquid chromatography-photo-diode array detection.

A chromatographic method, which can quantitate mitomycin C (MMC) along with two antiglaucoma drugs, is described. The separation of MMC, alphagan and timolol was performed on a reversed-phase C18 column with water-methanol-trifluoroacetic acid (65:35:0.01, v/v) as the mobile phase. By monitoring at 360, 248 and 296 nm, the lower limits of detection for MMC, alphagan and timolol are, respectively, 1.0, 2.0 and 5.0 ng (injection amount) at three-time S/N ratio. The dynamic ranges of quantitation for the three drugs are, respectively, 1.0 ng-10.0 microg, 2.0 ng-10.0 microg and 5.0 ng-10.0 microg with linearity being larger than 0.9960. This method was applied to the determination of MMC levels in Tenon's and trabeculum tissues of 10 glaucoma patients. MMC levels in these tissues, which were obtained from glaucoma filtering surgery, were determined following a multiple extraction with methanol. The recovery of MMC for a two-batch extraction was better than 91.2%. The reproducibility of measurement for the MMC levels in these tissues is 2.5-6.0% RSD for triplicate injections. The intra-day variation of retention times for the MMC peaks was less than 1.6% RSD (n=3). The inter-day variation of retention times for the MMC peaks was less than 4.8% RSD (n=3). MMC was detectable in three trabeculum tissues out of 10 cases (ranging from 0.8 to 25.5 ng/mg specimen), while MMC was detected in nine Tenon's tissues out of 10 cases (ranging from 0.3 to 21.1 ng/mg specimen). The results obtained show that the method is sensitive and selective for the quantitation of MMC.