BACKGROUND Although video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery for pulmonary resection is increasingly chosen over thoracotomy, the optimal analgesia regimen for thoracoscopy is unknown. The purpose of this trial was to compare the efficacy of analgesia from preoperative bupivacaine paravertebral nerve blockade with that from placebo injections. METHODS Eighty adult patients undergoing unilateral t...

Posterior mediastende en sık görülen tümörler, nörojenik tümörlerdir. Genellikle periferik sinir kılıfından köken alan bu tümörler içinde schwannomlara rastlanır. mediastinal kitleler çoğunlukla benign karakterli olup, iyi prognoza sahiptir. Kliniğimizde intratorasik ve paravertebral yerleşimli schwannom saptanan opere edilen iki olgu literatür eşliğinde değerlendirildi.

Thoracotomies are among the most painful of surgical incisions. Postoperatively, the movement of the chest with each breath increases the pain, and patients often “splint” to the point of hypercapnea or hypoxia. Substantial analgesia is required to avoid postoperative respiratory complications, but heavy opioid use blunts the respiratory drive and may itself be associated with postoperative com...

To the Editor:—We read with much interest the recently published study by Exadaktylos et al. Their retrospective cohort study identified a beneficial relation between paravertebral block and cancer recurrence in women undergoing breast cancer surgery. The authors opined that regional anesthesia might help to maintain normal perioperative immune function and reduce the risk of tumor recurrence a...

BACKGROUND Effective control of postoperative pain remains one of the most important and pressing issues in the field of surgery and has a significant impact on our health care system. In too many patients, pain is treated inadequately, causing them needless suffering and they can develop complications as an indirect consequence of pain. Analgesic modalities, if properly applied, can prevent or...

The mechanisms causing persistence of embryonal cells that later give rise to tumors is unknown. One tumorigenic factor in the embryonal childhood tumor neuroblastoma is the MYCN protooncogene. Here we show that normal mice developed neuroblast hyperplasia in paravertebral ganglia at birth that completely regressed by 2 weeks of age. In contrast, ganglia from MYCN transgenic (TH-MYCN) mice demo...

Few studies have been conducted to explain the pain patterns resulting from osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures (OVCF). We analyzed pain patterns to elucidate the pain mechanism and to provide initial guide for the management of OVCFs. Sixty-four patients underwent percutaneous vertebroplasty (N=55) or kyphoplasty (N=9). Three pain patterns were formulized to classify pains due to OVCF...