Surgical approach to the posterior fossa in children, including anesthetic considerations and complications: The prone and the sitting position. Technical note.

Introduction: Medulloblastoma (MB) in children is, in most cases, a midline lesion located in the posterior fossa, with a high tendency to invade the fourth ventricle (and sometimes its floor).

Methods: In this technical note, we present both the sitting and the prone position for children with medulloblastoma. These positions will be described together by deliberately deciding not to oppose one against the other.

Strengths of the French end-of-life Law as Well as its Shortcomings in Handling Intractable Disputes Between Physicians and Families.

French end-of-life law aims at protecting patients from unreasonable treatments, but has been used to force caregivers to prolong treatments deemed unreasonable. We describe six cases (five intensive care unit patients including two children) where families disagreed with a decision to withdraw treatments and sued medical teams. An emergent inquiry was instigated by the families.

[Acute pancreatitis caused by sodium valproate. Review of the literature apropos of a case in a child].

The authors report on the case of a 12.5 and year-old epileptic boy with severe acute pancreatitis which appeared 39 months after starting treatment with sodium valproate (VAP) at a daily dosage of 26.6 mg/kg.

[Continuous inflation of a leaking cuff of an intubation tube].

Perforation of the cuff of the endotracheal tube peroperatively is a very serious problem, especially when it occurs in a patient prone on an orthopaedic table. This is even more dramatic when the patient is not breathing spontaneously and he cannot be turned over to be reintubated. Given the unusual character of this situation, an apparatus has been designed to keep the cuff inflated permanently.

[Early excision and grafting in the burned child. Apropos of 49 cases studied retrospectively 1986-1987].

Early excision and grafting (EEG) is a commonly-used surgical technique which limits the risk of infection and improves healing. However, when used on children, their particular anatomic and physiological specificities must be taken into account. The authors present a retrospective investigation concerning 49 EEG performed on 45 patients from five months to nineteen years old, presenting a burnt skin surface of between 1% and 70%.

[Zona after spinal anesthesia: coincidence or consequence?].

A case is reported of a herpes zoster infection occurring a few days after spinal anaesthesia in a man with severe cardiac disease who had undergone transurethral endoscopic resection of a prostatic epithelioma. The question as to whether there was a relationship between the two events had to be asked, all the more so as the rash seemed to be centered on the puncture wound. Others factors involved may have been the effect of anaesthesia on the body's defence mechanisms, the use of prophylactic antibiotics and the neoplasm.