Background: Achieving haemostasis during surgical procedures within the brain is of paramount importance. Bipolar cauterization is most effectively used to occlude identifiable vessels but it has minimal efficacy in controlling the oozing bleeding that characterises most neurological pathologies. In such cases chemical haemostatic agents are often preferable to bipolar cautery. Rarely these che...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of central nervous system. As a result of the damage done to the myelin, lesions termed as plaques are formed in the white matter. The sizes of those plaques vary from milimetric values to 4-5cm. Large lesions of that size may behave like an abscess or tumor in the brain. Differentiating single lesions from gliomas, and distinguishing multiple ...

A 74-year-old immunocompetent man admitted for severe retro-orbital headache was diagnosed with isolated sphenoiditis. At the time of scheduled surgery, the patient was mildly obtunded, and a head CT revealed a temporal lobe abscess. The patient underwent a left temporal craniectomy and a bilateral endoscopic sphenoid sinusotomy, which revealed gross fungal debris. The patient made a full recov...

OBJECTIVES To review the management, causative organisms, morbidity and mortality of intracranial abscesses secondary to sinus and ear disease. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING Retrospective, case note review of suppurative intracranial complications of ear and sinus disease in patients admitted to a regional neurosurgical centre between 1980 and 2004. These data were compared with published material...

BACKGROUND To describe the clinical features of intratemporal complications of acute otitis media (AOM) in children, a retrospective study was carried out for two years. METHODS We considered acute mastoiditis, presence of postauricular swelling, erythema and tenderness and anteroinferior displacement of the auricle; labyrinthitis, presence of vestibular symptoms (spontaneous nystagmus and at...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Brain abscess is an uncommon intracranial suppuration, especially in children. We reviewed the records of children with brain abscess admitted to Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, and analyzed data on presenting symptoms, predisposing factors and outcomes. METHODS Information was obtained retrospectively from medical records of children diagnosed with br...