Impact of supplemental home enteral feeding postesophagectomy on nutrition, body composition, quality of life, and patient satisfaction.

The aim of this prospective cohort study is to analyze the impact of supplemental home enteral nutrition (HEN) post-esophageal cancer surgery on nutritional parameters, quality of life (QL), and patient satisfaction. A systematic review reported that over 60% of patients lose >10% of both body weight and BMI by 6 months after esophagectomy. Enteral feeding (EF) is increasingly a modern standard postoperatively; however, the impact of extended HEN postdischarge has not been systematically studied.

The subdural space of the spine: A lymphatic sink? Myodil's last message.

Following the radiological study of a large number of myelograms, starting over 50 years ago when the only clinical contrast medium available to show the contents of the spinal canal was an iodized oil, the author has collected a number of examples where the oil was inadvertently injected into the subdural area, rather than the intended subarachnoid space. By taking follow-up films at various intervals following the inadvertent injection, it has been possible to study the extent to which the subdural space could become visualized from a lumbar injection, the contrast medium sometimes passing to the top of the cervical region and the lower part of the sacrum. Also, the contrast passed outward along the peri-neural lymphatic sheaths or spaces of the issuing spinal nerves, where it might remain for months, and under the influence of gravity it could extend for a considerable way.

Astrocytic hypertrophy: an important pathological feature of chronic experimental autoimmune encephalitis in aged rats.

Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) was induced in young (2-3 month old), middle-aged (12-13 month old) and geriatric (24-26 month old) Lewis (JC) rats by active immunisation with myelin basic protein (MBP) in complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA). It was found that aged Lewis (JC) rats developed a more chronic form of EAE than younger rats of the same strain, a phenomenon observed in both male and female rats despite males developing more severe disease than females at all ages. Middle-aged recipients also developed more severe disease than young recipients when EAE was induced by the adoptive transfer of lymphocytes from actively immunised young donors, suggesting that disease chronicity in middle-aged animals is a property of the central nervous system (CNS) milieu.