Odontoid fractures are typically associated with low rates of acute neurologic deficit and morbidity/mortality in nonelderly patients. In the patient in this case, traumatic injury triggered by a syncopal event led to a combined C1-C2 fracture and a fatal spinal cord injury with apnea, quadriplegia, and cardiovascular instability. We briefly review the anatomical basis for the pathophysiology o...

A patient with a symptomatic petrous carotid artery stenosis underwent balloon angioplasty, which was complicated by a flow-limiting dissection. The problem was resolved by deploying a balloon-expandable coronary stent. The patient suffered no neurologic deficit, was discharged within 12 hours, and was asymptomatic at last follow-up, 5 months after the procedure, without warfarin therapy. This ...

Transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) are ominous and call for acute interventions, including hospitalization. TIAs are defined by complete resolution of an acute neurologic deficit, but any amount of recovery is probably the most important defining feature and, paradoxically, is strongly predictive of a subsequent event. Most patients should be hospitalized after a TIA, to provide an opportunity t...

Indications The indications for embolization of spinal cord AVMs include all symptomatic patients with lesions that can be cured; adjuvant therapy before surgery/radiosurgery; and palliative therapy when total obliteration is not practical and the patient suffers from progressive neurologic deficit or high risk of hemorrhage (associated aneurysm or pseudoaneurysm, previous hemorrhage) or when p...

Oral myiasis is a rare disease in humans associated with poor oral hygiene, suppurative oral lesions, alcoholism and senility, among other conditions. A case of oral myiasis in a 34-year-old white male with advanced periodontal disease and neurologic deficit is reported. Treatment consisted of manual removal of the larvae, one by one, with the help of clinical forceps and subsequent management ...

Equinus contracture often is a complication of trauma, burns, or neurologic deficit. Many patients with contractures secondary to trauma or burns have poor soft tissue, which makes invasive correction a less appealing option. The Ilizarov external fixator has been used as a less invasive attempt to correct equinus contracture. We describe our "dynamic" technique and present a clinical patient s...

We have read the published paper by Singh et al. [1] with great interest. In their study, the authors evaluated the outcome of video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) in 9 patients (males = 6, females = 3) with clinicoradiological diagnosis of tubercular spondylitis of the dorsal spine. But they said “We performed video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery in 9 patients (males = 6, females = 7) with t...

Dissection of the internal carotid artery usually involves the cervical portion but, rarely , may involve the intracranial portion. In contrast to extracranial dissection, the clinical course of intracranial dissection is often catastrophic, with rapid onset of profound neurologic deficit, occlusion of middle andjor anterior cerebral arteries, and high mortality rates. We describe a case of sup...

Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) is a rare disorder that affects the pediatric population. LCH complicated with a neurologic deficit due to the presence of epidural involvement is a rare condition. We describe the CT imaging features in a 2-year-old boy who presented with drowsy consciousness resulting from an epidural hematoma caused by spontaneous bleeding in an LCH of the skull. CT is an ...

This 54-year-old patient with a breast carcinoma of one year's evolution presented a progressive paraparesis and sphincter disregulation of a week evolution; MRI image showed a tumor in the medullary conus. She improved after removal of the conus mass. The histologic diagnosis was metastasis of adenocarcinoma. Metastasis at this level is infrequent and represents less than 1% of all spinal meta...