Publications by authors named "Boubaker A"

Background Low back pain (LBP) is common and considerably impacts daily lives across all age groups. MRI is not frequently used as a first-line investigation for patients presenting with LBP, except in the presence of red-flag symptoms. This study aimed to use pain severity and its impact as a predictor for MRI findings to help physicians decide whether a patient needs an MRI.

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Background: Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is a malignant childhood tumor that most commonly involves the skeletal muscles of the head and neck, genitourinary tract, limbs, and, rarely, the spine.

Case Description: A 19-year-old male presented with cauda equina symptoms. Magnetic resonance imaging showed a C7/T1 homogeneously enhancing lesion, causing pathological fracture of the T1.

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Nuclear medicine has a central role in the diagnosis, staging, response assessment and long-term follow-up of neuroblastoma, the most common solid extracranial tumour in children. These EANM guidelines include updated information on I-mIBG, the most common study in nuclear medicine for the evaluation of neuroblastoma, and on PET/CT imaging with F-FDG, F-DOPA and Ga-DOTA peptides. These PET/CT studies are increasingly employed in clinical practice.

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Context: Hodgkin Lymphoma is rarely diagnosed as spinal cord compression syndrome. Caused by an epidural mass, this complication is often encountered in a late stage of the disease. We report the case of a 40-year-old man presenting with symptoms of low thoracic spinal cord compression due to an epidural tumor on the MRI.

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Background: Cysts of parathyroid origin are sometimes encountered and can easily be mistaken as thyroidal cysts. Functional parathyroid cysts, with symptoms and signs of hyperparathyroidism, are rare and may be a diagnostic challenge to clinicians. We report here on three cases of functional parathyroid cysts that illustrate diagnosis difficulties related to unusual clinical presentations in three Caucasian women, including negative parathyroid scintigraphy.

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Background: Validation of the prognostic value of the SIOPEN mIBG skeletal scoring system in two independent stage 4, mIBG avid, high-risk neuroblastoma populations.

Results: The semi-quantitative SIOPEN score evaluates skeletal meta-iodobenzylguanidine (mIBG) uptake on a 0-6 scale in 12 anatomical regions. Evaluable mIBG scans from 216 COG-A3973 and 341 SIOPEN/HR-NBL1 trial patients were reviewed pre- and post-induction chemotherapy.

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A semiquantitative I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (I-MIBG) scoring method (the Curie score, or CS) was previously examined in the Children's Oncology Group (COG) high-risk neuroblastoma trial, COG A3973, with a postinduction CS of more than 2 being associated with poor event-free survival (EFS). The validation of the CS in an independent dataset, International Society of Paediatric Oncology European Neuroblastoma/High-Risk Neuroblastoma 1 (SIOPEN/HR-NBL1), is now reported. A retrospective analysis of I-MIBG scans obtained from patients who had been prospectively enrolled in SIOPEN/HR-NBL1 was performed.

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Background: Albuminuria is a potential biomarker of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in various glomerular diseases. Vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) often progresses to CKD, and study is required of use of albuminuria as a biomarker for this condition. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between albuminuria and glomerular filtration rate (GFR) or filtration fraction (FF) in children with VUR.

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Purpose More than two decades ago, an international working group established the International Neuroblastoma Response Criteria (INRC) to assess treatment response in children with neuroblastoma. However, this system requires modification to incorporate modern imaging techniques and new methods for quantifying bone marrow disease that were not previously widely available. The National Cancer Institute sponsored a clinical trials planning meeting in 2012 to update and refine response criteria for patients with neuroblastoma.

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Purpose: To compare the value of pretreatment functional and morphological imaging parameters for predicting survival in patients undergoing transarterial radioembolization using yttrium-90 (Y-TARE) for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (uHCC).

Methods: We analysed data from 48 patients in our prospective database undergoing Y-TARE treatment for uHCC (31 resin, 17 glass). All patients underwent F-FDG PET/CT and morphological imaging (CT and MRI scans) as part of a pretherapeutic work-up.

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The aim of this study was to compare survival of patients treated for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (uHCC) with Y transarterial radioembolization (TARE) using pretreatment partition model dosimetry (PMD). We performed a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data on 77 patients consecutively treated (mean age ± SD, 66.4 ± 12.

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Unlabelled: Y-microsphere selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) is a valuable treatment in unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Partition-model predictive dosimetry relies on differential tumor-to-nontumor perfusion evaluated on pretreatment Tc-macroaggregated albumin (MAA) SPECT/CT. The aim of this study was to evaluate agreement between the predictive dosimetry of Tc-MAA SPECT/CT and posttreatment dosimetry based on Y time-of-flight (TOF) PET/CT.

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Purpose: The spinal epidural angiolipomas are rare expansive processes made of mature lipomatous and angiomatous elements. They often have a benign character. Their etiology, pathogenesis remains uncertain, and it is a cause of spinal cord compression.

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Background: Chondrosarcoma is a rare malignant tumor of bone. This family of tumors can be primary malignant tumors or a secondary malignant transformation of an underlying benign cartilage tumor. Secondary chondrosarcoma arising from a benign solitary costal osteochondroma is extremely rare.

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Background: Involvement of the orbit with Burkitt's lymphoma is a very rare presentation of extra-nodal lymphoma.

Illustrative Case: We report a case of a 2-year-old female presented an unusual location of sporadic Burkitt's lymphoma arising in the orbital region. Diagnostic magnetic resonance imagining identified an oval-shaped mass on the lateral rectus of the right orbit that caused dislocation of eyeball, for which she underwent a biopsy from the periorbital swellings.

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Purpose: Adenoma is the main parathyroid disorder leading to primary hyperparathyroidism (PHP). Minimally invasive parathyroidectomy (MIP) is recognized as a valid procedure for adenoma-related PHP. It requires precise preoperative localization combining Tc-99m-MIBI (methoxy-isobutyl-isonitrile) scintigraphy and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) with x-ray computed tomography (CT) and intraoperative confirmation of successful excision by change in intact parathormone (iPTH) levels.

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Background And Importance: Spontaneous spinal subdural hematomas are rare. Their occurrence in a child with congenital von Willebrand disease and the complication of their surgery by a large secondary syringomyelia have never been previously reported.

Case Presentation: A 13-year-old girl with congenital von Willebrand disease presented to our emergency department in January 2011 for sudden onset of severe back pain centered in her thoracic spine rapidly aggravated by signs of acute myelopathy without any precipitating factor.

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