Journal of neurosurgery
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Journal of neurosurgery · Feb 1990
Surgical management of epilepsy associated with cerebral arteriovenous malformations.
Between 1982 and 1986, 27 patients with seizure disorders due to cerebral arteriovenous malformation (AVM) were surgically treated by the authors. These patients had no history or clinical manifestation of intracranial hemorrhage. All were treated with anticonvulsant agents by their neurologists but became disabled due to inadequate control of seizures by medication, side effects of the anticonvulsant drugs, or the effects on their professional lives of even infrequent seizures. ⋯ The latter patient, whose epileptic lesion was not completely excised because of its location in the motor cortex, had poor seizure control postoperatively. Another patient required a second operation to remove a remote seizure focus. In this series, proposed mechanisms of seizure associated with cerebral AVM include focal cerebral ischemia secondary to arteriovenous shunting, gliosis of the surrounding brain, and a secondary epileptogenesis in the temporal lobe.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
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Journal of neurosurgery · Feb 1990
ReviewDissecting aneurysms of the intracranial vertebral artery.
Among 86 patients with aneurysms arising from the vertebral artery or its branches, 24 had dissecting aneurysms. The patients with dissecting aneurysms were characteristically relatively young males. Twenty-one patients presented with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and three with ischemia. ⋯ After this period, the aneurysm was whitish gray in color and had become firm. Of 36 other cases of vertebral dissecting aneurysm reported in the literature, 20 were operated on. The indications for surgery are discussed.
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Journal of neurosurgery · Feb 1990
Long-term pain relief produced by intrathecal morphine infusion in 53 patients.
The present report details the characteristics of the analgesic effects of morphine administered chronically by infusion pumps implanted in 53 patients suffering from terminal metastatic disease. The median postimplant survival time in these patients was 4 months. Patients (mean age 58 years) were characterized according to the duration of pain before pump implantation (mean 16 months), prior consumption of systemic opioids (mean one to six daily analgesic equivalents of morphine), and their response to a trial intrathecal dose of morphine (1 to 2 mg). ⋯ The maximum increase was observed in patients with a low analgesic index, and this rapid incrementation was usually correlated with an unsatisfactory overall outcome. Evidence that long-term infusion continues to yield analgesia was evidenced in six cases where there was an unanticipated loss of drug infusion and a corresponding increase in parenteral narcotic consumption. These data indicate the long-term efficacy and safety of spinal opioid infusion in patients with terminal cancer, and emphasize the advantage of assessing the sensitivity of the patient to spinal opioids by a standardized trial injection prior to pump placement as a prognostic indication of outcome.
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Journal of neurosurgery · Feb 1990
Immunohistochemical demonstration of DNA polymerase alpha in human brain-tumor cells.
The proliferative capacity of brain-tumor cells was analyzed in vitro and in situ using monoclonal antibody (MAb) against deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) polymerase alpha. For the in vitro studies, two cultured human glioma cell lines were investigated using MAb against DNA polymerase alpha, the MAb Ki-67, a serum against proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA/cyclin), bromodeoxyuridine (BUdR), and an anti-BUdR MAb. During exponential growth of the cells, the percentage of polymerase alpha-positive cells (the "polymerase alpha score") ranged from 72.0% to 77.1%, the Ki-67-positive cells (the "Ki-67 score") ranged from 43.4% to 59.4%, the PCNA/cyclin-positive cells from 30.9% to 41.4%, and the BUdR labeling index from 28.6% to 39.3%. ⋯ Polymerase alpha scores were generally higher than Ki-67 scores in the same specimen, especially in malignant brain tumors. These findings suggest that immunostaining of DNA polymerase alpha is a convenient and important new method by which to estimate the cellular proliferation rate of brain tumors. Polymerase alpha scores may be closer to the growth fraction of the individual tumor than the MAb Ki-67 or other scores.