Successful unilateral thoracoscopy for bilateral ectopic mediastinal parathyroidectomy.

Ectopic parathyroid glands are frequently located in the thymus and may become hyperplasic in patients with secondary hyperparathyroidism. When medical management fails, surgical removal is required, using either a traditional open sternotomy approach or video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS). We were able to excise large, bilateral, mediastinal parathyroid glands using only left VATS.

[Tumor-to-tumor metastasis: report of three cases].

Tumor-to-tumor metastasis is a very rare event. We report three cases of tumor metastasizing in another tumor: a clear cell renal cell carcinoma in a vesicular thyroid adenoma, a lung carcinoma in a meningioma and a neuroendocrine lung carcinoma in a clear cell renal cell carcinoma. According to the literature, clear cell renal cell carcinoma is the most common tumor recipient of metastasis while lung carcinoma is the most common donor tumor.

Two years' follow-up of newborn infants after extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).

Objective: Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a technique of extracorporeal oxygenation used in newborn infants with refractory hypoxemia after failure of maximal conventional medical management, when mortality risk is higher than 80%. We retrospectively reviewed all the neonates treated by ECMO between October 1991 and September 1997 in our newborn intensive care unit.

Methods: Fifty-seven patients were treated with ECMO for severe respiratory failure: congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) (n=23), neonatal sepsis (NS) (n=14), meconium aspiration syndrome (MAS) (n=12), and others (n=8).