This study introduced the clinical and paraclinical features and outcome of treatment of 3 cases of brain abscess rupturing into the ventricle in the nervous surgical department of Vietduc Hospital during 1994-2001 and reviewed the medical literature during 1950-2001. The brain abscess rupturing into the ventricle was very severe complication with the mortality rate much higher than this of brain abscess without rupturing into the ventricle (morbidity rate: 60 -100%). In order to reduce the mortality rate it should early diagnose and treat basing on the clinical signs such as rapid worsened perception, sudden happened, new meningeal signs.
Brain Abscess ; Rupture ; Cerebral Ventricles

The authors presented one case of Dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumor revealed at a 23 years old woman with a 6 years epileptic. The histological and immunohistochemical aspect identified a “nonspecific” DNT. The authors discussed about the clinical, CT scanner, MRI and pathologic aspects and reviewed in literature
Neuroectodermal Tumors, Primitive, Peripheral ; Neoplasms, Neuroepithelial

Background: Recently, microplate almar blue assay has been used commonly in detecting gen related to tuberculosis drug resistance, which provides results after 5-7 days with lower cost compared to traditional methods. Objective: To evaluate the application of microplate almar blue assay for rapid detection of drug resistance of M. tuberculosis strains. Subject and Method: A microplate-based assay which uses Alamar blue reagent - an oxidation reduction dye (MABA), was used for the determination of the anti-tuberculosis drug (isoniazid-INH, rifampicine-RIF, streptomycine-STR and ethabuton=EMB) resistance of 96 M. tuberculosis strains isolated from Vietnamese patients in comparison to those obtained by conversional method. Result: MABA showed to have high sensitivity and specificity in testing the sensitivity to individual anti-tuberculosis drugs (from 82.4% for STR to 93.3% for - INH and from 82.5% for EMB to 98.4% for STR; respectively), as well as for the multi-drug resistant M.tuberculosis (86.4% of sensitivity), highly correlated with the result determined by proportion method. Conclusion: MABA reveals the advantage in shortening test time, in simple performance and lower cost compared with the conversional culture based methods.
Microplate almar blue assay ; M. tuberculosis ; drug resistance