Rigler’s sign and the football sign

Natural Selection: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Natural selection is an important factor influencing variation in the human genome, but most genetic studies of natural selection have focused on variants with unknown phenotypic associations. This trend is changing. New studies are rapidly revealing the effects of natural selection on genetic variants of known or likely functional importance.

Trauma or Tumor? The Nail Splay Sign

Coffee bean sign, whirl sign and bird's beak sign in the diagnosis of sigmoid volvulus

The patient, a 28-year-old man who had presented to our Emergency Department (ED) with constant abdominal pain and distension for one day, had no previous medical or surgical history. He denied that he had any nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation. At admission, his physical examination revealed hypertension (TA: 152/97 mmHg) and a distended abdomen with generalised tenderness and hypoacti...

The Sign

Even in the most naïve sense, without qualification, the term sign imposes great difficulties. The word designates any thing, whether gesture, mark, token, symbol or even natural event, that expresses, indicates or refers to a meaning or to something else. Yet even that most general and innocent statement offers at best a futile answer, as if to a question that already presupposes it: “what doe...

Bilateral Schwartze Sign, Decision-Making for Surgery

Otosclerosis is an otic capsule disorder that leads to progressive conductive and/or sensorineural hearing loss due to stapes footplate fixation and cochlear bone involvement. The disorder is bilateral in 70% of patients and it usually starts between the third and fifth decade. One of its characteristic clinical findings is Schwartze sign which refers to a reddish discoloration over the promont...