Archives of neurology
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Archives of neurology · Dec 2011
Thrombolytic treatment of patients with acute ischemic stroke related to underlying arterial dissection in the United States.
To determine the outcomes related to thrombolytic treatment of an acute ischemic stroke secondary to an arterial dissection in a large national cohort. ⋯ The adjusted rate of favorable outcomes is lower among patients with ischemic stroke with underlying arterial dissection following thrombolytic treatment compared with those without underlying dissections. However, the observed lower rates are not influenced by thrombolytic treatment.
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Archives of neurology · Dec 2011
Neurological injury in adults treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) may be urgently used as a last resort form of life support when all other treatment options for potentially reversible cardiopulmonary injury have failed. ⋯ Severe neurological sequelae occur frequently in adult ECMO-treated patients with otherwise reversible cardiopulmonary injury (conservative estimate, 50%) and include a range of potentially fatal neurological diagnoses that may be due to the precipitating event and/or ECMO treatment.
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Archives of neurology · Nov 2011
Case ReportsPositron emission tomography and neuropathologic estimates of fibrillar amyloid-β in a patient with Down syndrome and Alzheimer disease.
Down syndrome appears to be associated with a virtually certain risk of fibrillar amyloid-β (Aβ) pathology by the age of 40 and a very high risk of dementia at older ages. The positron emission tomography (PET) ligand florbetapir F18 has been shown to characterize fibrillar Aβ in the living human brain and to provide a close correlation with subsequent Aβ neuropathology in individuals proximate to and after the end of life. The extent to which the most frequently used PET ligands can be used to detect fibrillar Aβ in patients with Down syndrome remains to be determined. ⋯ Florbetapir PET can be used to detect increased cerebral-to-cerebellar fibrillar Aβ burden in a Down syndrome patient with Alzheimer disease, even in the presence of frequent amyloid angiopathy and diffuse plaques in the cerebellum. Additional studies are needed to determine the extent to which PET could be used to detect and to track fibrillar Aβ and to evaluate investigational Aβ-modifying treatments in the presymptomatic and symptomatic stages of Alzheimer disease.
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Archives of neurology · Nov 2011
Comparative StudyUsing positron emission tomography and florbetapir F18 to image cortical amyloid in patients with mild cognitive impairment or dementia due to Alzheimer disease.
To characterize quantitative florbetapir F 18 (hereafter referred to as simply florbetapir) positron emission tomographic (PET) measurements of fibrillar β-amyloid (Aβ) burden in a large clinical cohort of participants with probable Alzheimer disease (AD) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and older healthy controls (OHCs). ⋯ The findings of our analysis confirm the ability of florbetapir-PET SUVRs to characterize amyloid levels in clinically probable AD, MCI, and OHC groups using continuous and binary measures of fibrillar Aβ burden. It introduces criteria to determine whether an image is associated with an intermediate-to-high likelihood of pathologic AD or with having any identifiable cortical amyloid level above that seen in low-risk young controls.