Effects of different mechanical ventilation strategies on the mucociliary system.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of different mechanical ventilation (MV) strategies on the mucociliary system.

Design And Setting: Experimental study.

Subjects: Twenty-seven male New Zealand rabbits.

Utility of second-look ultrasound in the management of incidental enhancing lesions detected by breast MR imaging.

Purpose: To assess the utility of second-look ultrasound (US) for identifying and characterising incidental enhancing lesions detected by breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Materials And Methods: From among 655 consecutive breast MRI studies, 62 lesions (MRI visible, nonpalpable, occult at first-look US and mammography) were recommended for second-look US. MRI enhancement of lesions was mass-like in 59 cases (95%) and non-mass-like in three (5%).

Inflammatory breast cancer: MR imaging findings.

Purpose: This paper describes the magnetic resonance (MR) imaging features of primary inflammatory breast cancer (IBC).

Materials And Methods: Two radiologists reviewed the MR examinations of 14 women with a pathological diagnosis of IBC. Images were assessed for skin thickening, oedema, nipple retraction, architectural distortion, type and extent of parenchymal and cutaneous enhancement and enhancement kinetics over time, axillary and internal mammary lymphadenopathy, pectoral muscle enhancement and additional findings.

Combined radiofrequency and kyphoplasty in painful osteolytic metastases to vertebral bodies.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess retrospectively the safety and efficacy of combined radiofrequency (RF) and kyphoplasty (KP) in managing painful osteolytic metastases to vertebral bodies resistant to conservative treatments.

Materials And Methods: Eleven patients (9 women and 2 men; mean age 68 years; age range 58-82) with painful osteolytic vertebral body metastases unresponsive to conservative treatments underwent RF combined with KP under general anaesthesia. Primary neoplasms were kidney carcinoma (n=1), breast carcinoma (n=1), thyroid carcinoma (n=2) and multiple myeloma (n=7).

Treatment of type-A3 amyelic thoracolumbar fractures (burst fractures) with kyphoplasty: initial experience.

The authors propose a minimally invasive procedure for treating type-A3 amyelic thoracolumbar fractures according to Magerl classification (compression burst fractures). The procedure, percutaneous kyphoplasty, allows the fracture to be reduced and vertebral height to be restored by injecting bone cement into a cavity created in the vertebral body by an inflatable balloon introduced with the percutaneous approach. Four patients were successfully treated, with clinical and functional benefit in all cases.