Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria
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Comparative Study
Emergency physician's diagnosis of stroke subtype. An accuracy study.
To evaluate the accuracy of clinical unstructured and structured diagnosis of acute stroke subtypes--cerebral haemorrhage (CH), cerebral infarction (CI), subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH). ⋯ Both clinical diagnosis (made by emergency physicians) and the available diagnostic tests fail to confidently discriminate CH and CI.
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The use of opioids for treatment of non-malignant pain is controversial. The evaluation of pain relief and of the quality of life of 11 severely incapacitated chronic non-cancer pain patients treated with long term intrathecal infusion of opioids trought implantable pumps was performed. The mean duration of pain complaints was 5.3 years. ⋯ In only 1 patient, the duration of pain episodes was still longer than 6 hours. Quality of life improved in 36.36% of the cases. The long term spinal opioids through implantable pumps for non-malignant pains results in pain relief but not necessarily improves the quality of life.
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Leprosy is one of the most common diseases of peripheral nerves in the world. In Brazil it is particularly frequent, being a major health problem. In tuberculoid leprosy the ulnar nerve is the most common affected nerve. ⋯ We performed a biopsy in the dorsal sensory branch of the ulnar nerve in the hand in 17 patients with ulnar palsy with thickening of the nerve in the elbow, without skin changes. The pathological findings consisted mainly of: loss of fibers (14 cases), inflammatory infiltration (13), fibrosis (12), demyelination and remyelination (9), presence of granuloma (6) and presence of bacilli (5 cases). We conclude that in case of ulnar nerve palsy in leprosy without skin changes, the biopsy of the dorsal sensory branch of this nerve in the hand is a good procedure for the diagnosis of leprosy.