Chronic compression or ischemia of the spinal cord in the cervical spine causes a clinical syndrome known as cervical myelopathy. Recently, a new term “degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM)” was introduced. DCM encompasses spondylosis, intervertebral disk herniation, facet arthrosis, ligamentous hypertrophy, calcification, and ossification. The pathophysiology of DCM includes structural and functional abnormalities of the spinal cord caused by static and dynamic factors. In nonoperative patients, cervical myelopathy has a poor prognosis. Surgical treatments, such as anterior or posterior decompression accompanying arthrodesis, arthroplasty, or laminoplasty, should be considered for patients with chronic progressive cervical myelopathy. Surgical decompression can prevent the progression of myelopathy and improve the neurologic status, functional outcomes, and quality of life, irrespective of differences in medical systems and sociocultural determinants of health. The anterior surgical approach to the cervical spine has the advantage of removing or floating the intervertebral disk, osteophytes, and ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament that compress the spinal cord directly. The posterior surgical approach to the cervical spine is mainly used for multisegment spinal cord compression in patients with cervical lordosis. In this review article, we addressed the pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, differential diagnosis, and treatment options for DCM.

No abstract available.
Classification* ; Humans ; Stomach Neoplasms* ; Survival Rate*

Carbon monoxide is colorless, oolorless, tasteless and non-irritating gas produced by the incomplete combustion of carbonaceous rnaterial. It combines with hemoglobin and displaces oxygen because the affinity of hemoglobin for carbon monoxide is two hundred times greater than oxygen. Symptoma and signs of carbon monoxide poisoning include headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, collapse, unconsciousness, blindness, convulsion, coma and skin lesions. Recently we have observed seven patients with carbon monoxide poisoning who expressed cutaneous syrnptoms. In this work we investigated the pathogenesis of cutaneous manifestations of carbon monoxide poisoning through clinical, histologic and electronmicroscopic study. The results are summarized as follows: 1. Mental states of the patients were comatose in two, Semicomatcse in two, stuporous in two, and drowsy in one patient. In routine laboratory tests, we observed elevated blood sugar in six, elevated sorum creatinine phosphokinase in four and abnormal findings in urinalysis in all patients. 2. Cutaneous lesions were vesicobullae, plaque or swelling, erythema, gangrene and 'ulceration in order of frequency and located in the dependent areas in six caies. 3. Histopathologically, the sites of the bullae were subepidermal in four cases and intraepidermal in. one case and there was one case with ulceration. 4. In electronmicroscopic findings, secretory and ductal cells showed degenerative
Blindness ; Blood Glucose ; Carbon Monoxide Poisoning* ; Carbon Monoxide* ; Carbon* ; Coma ; Creatinine ; Dizziness ; Erythema ; Gangrene ; Headache ; Humans ; Nausea ; Oxygen ; Seizures ; Skin ; Stupor ; Ulcer ; Unconsciousness ; Urinalysis ; Vomiting

PURPOSE: Lower caliceal stones treated with ESWL do fail to pass more frequently than middle or upper caliceal stones. We analyzed the results of ESWL of renal caliceal stones according to the location of calix. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We reviewed the stone-free rate in 119 caliceal stone patients treated with 3rd generation lithotriptor, EDAP LT-02 according to the caliceal location of the stone. Location of the stones were upper calix in 30, middle calix in 30, and lower calix in 59 patients. RESULTS: Stone-free rate was 90.0%(27/30 patients) in middle caliceal stones, 74.6%(44/59 patients) in lower caliceal stones, and 66.7%(20/30 patients) in upper caliceal stones. CONCLUSIONS: Stone-free rate of lower caliceal stones is higher than upper caliceal stones.
Humans ; Lithotripsy* ; Shock*

No abstract available.
Extracorporeal Circulation* ; Heart* ; Potassium* ; Thoracic Surgery*

No abstract available.

BACKGROUND: Despite improvement of mortality in acute myocardial infarcrtion, high mortality rate associated with cardiogenic shock remains essentially unchanged. We have reviewed our result of coronary intervention in 15 patients and found relative survival advantage. METHODS: Between Sep. 1992 and Aug. 1995, 15 consecutive patients(M. 10, F. 5) with cardiogenic shock in acute myocardial infarction were treated with coronary intervention using ballon PTCA. IABP was inserted in all patients prior to PTCA. RESULTS: 1) Most commonly found infarct related artery was left anterior descending artery(11) followed by right coronary artery(3) and left main coronary artery(1). 2) Successful reperfusion rate was 86.7%(13/15), and in-hospital mortality rate was 26.7%(4/15). 3) In-hospital mortality was higher in elderly patients compared with less than 70yaer old patients(0%(0/11)vs. 75.0%(3/4)(P < 0.05). 4) Mortality rate was lower in single vessel disease than multivessel disease(11.1%(1/9) vs. 50%(3/6) p<0.05). CONCLUSION: Although this study is uncontrolled, the date suggest that urgent coronary intervention for improving coronary perfusion may reduce mortality of acute myocardial infarction complicated by cardiogenic shock, particularly with single vessel disease and young age group.
Aged ; Arteries ; Hospital Mortality ; Humans ; Mortality ; Myocardial Infarction* ; Perfusion ; Reperfusion ; Shock, Cardiogenic*

No abstract available.
Allografts*

To investigate the nature of artifacts caused by air and chemical shift by fat, a test tube phantom study was performed in 2.0T and 0.5T superconducting magnetic resonance imaging systems in various imaging sequences. Spatial mismapping and signal change made image distortion in spin echo images of the air-column and severe signal voids in gradient echo images. Chemical shift artifacts appeared in the planes of frequency-encoding axis as crescent-shaped signal voids and summated bright signals, Both artifacts were more prominent in high field strength, Images at 0.5T showed more severe artifacts in the T2-weighted images than those in the other sequences. As the acquisition matrix increased, truncation artifacts decreased and susceptibility artifacts in gradient echo images diminished. Familiarity with causes, appearances and mechanisms of various artifacts will help radiologists for interpretation of MRI.
Artifacts* ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging* ; Recognition (Psychology)

It is established that intracranial hemorrhage is relatively common benign intracranial diseases in adult. This is very rare in children reports are limited to a few cases or to those cited in reviews of series of intracranial hemorrhage in adult group. We wish to report three cases of large intracranial hematoma in three infants. The diagnosis was greatly facilitated by the CT scan and the treatment did by the microsurgical methods.
Adult ; Cerebral Hemorrhage* ; Child ; Diagnosis ; Hematoma ; Humans ; Infant ; Intracranial Hemorrhages ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed