Sideline Sports Concussion Assessment.

The sideline assessment of concussions is a complex multisystem assessment to detect whether an athlete shows signs or symptoms of concussion and should be removed from practice or competition to prevent greater neurologic compromise. Sideline concussion assessments are challenging given some of the environmental conditions, substitution rules of some sports, the possibility of athletes underreporting symptoms, and the difficulties of defining a concussion. The SCAT is the standard of care and is augmented with other procedures to enhance sensitivity and specificity.

Botulinum toxin A for chronic daily headache: a randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel design study.

Sixty patients with headaches of more than 15 days per month were recruited for this double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel study of botulinum toxin type A (BTX) for chronic tension type and chronic migraine headaches. The primary efficacy point was the number of headache-free days as assessed by diary for 12 weeks after BTX injection. Secondary efficacy points included global impressions, the use of abortive headache medications, and palpation.

Quality and liability issues with the Papanicolaou smear: lessons from the science of error prevention.

The pathologists and cytologists who study Papanicolaou smears perform a highly successful cancer screening test in a low-prevalence population. This leads to a mathematically inevitable false-negative error rate even in the most competent professional hands. The US judicial system supports a public expectation of perfect performance by civil and, recently, criminal punishment of error.

The pathology of regulation.

Clinical pathology officially began when inquisitive physicians in the nineteenth century sought explanations for the diseases they observed in their patients. The increasing application of the basic sciences to patients required physicians to spend more time and energy in the laboratory than with their patients. Methodology followed new technologic innovations that the profession began to critically review in the late 1940s.

Intraoperative radioimmunodetection of ovarian cancer using monoclonal antibody B72.3 and a portable gamma-detecting probe.

To assess the value of radioimmunoguided surgery in the intraoperative detection of ovarian cancer, we used monoclonal antibody B72.3, radiolabeled with 125I, and a hand-held gamma-detecting probe in 13 women with ovarian cancer undergoing exploratory laparotomy. B72.

Physician referral patterns for stutterers.

Many children who stutter initially seek guidance from their pediatricians. Pediatricians often do not refer stutterers for speech therapy. We present a brief analysis of pediatricians' views regarding stuttering, as well as their exposure to patients who stutter.

Nuclear magnetic resonance diagnosis of an anaplastic astrocytoma.

A patient presented with an 8-month history of a progressive left homonymous visual field deficit, left hemiparesis, and a left thalamocortical sensory deficit that was not detectable by repeated conventional neurodiagnostic evaluations. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging revealed a right parietal lesion characterized by a prolonged T2 (spin-spin relaxation time). At surgery, the mass proved to be an anaplastic astrocytoma.

Nuclear magnetic resonance evaluation of stroke. A preliminary report.

Nine patients who had acute and subacute stroke were examined by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) using a 6-MHz Bruker Instruments proton scanner. A modified Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill pulse sequence was used for signal detection. The resultant string of spin-echoes was Fourier transformed into projections that were subsequently back-projected to a series of spin-echo images.

Quality assurance in surgical pathology--personal and peer assessment.

A mechanism for quality assurance in surgical pathology based on a review of the surgical pathology reports is described. The setting up of performance standards by the participating pathologists before the institution in quality assurance helped in acceptance of the critique of the reviewer. Suggestions are made to improve the quality of the surgical pathology report by incorporating the needs of th surgeons and oncologists, in the hope that the quality assurance process becomes oriented to patients care.

Haemorrhagic complications of multiple sclerosis.

Neurological exacerbations in multiple sclerosis patients are usually attributed to relapses of the disease. This report emphasises that other conditions, such as spontaneous CNS haemorrhage, may be responsible for the clinical deterioration. We describe two patients appropriately diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis who developed spontaneous CNS haemorrhage.

Spectrophotometer: new instrument for ultrarapid cell analysis.

A new device has been developed for measuring and displaying multiple spectrophotometric properties of biological cells at rates exceeding 500 cells per second. Preliminary observations of human cells from different sites in the body were made at wavelengths of 2537 and 4100 angstroms to estimate cellular nucleic acid per unit volume of individual cells of large populations of cells. Display patterns were obtained which were consistent, and characteristically different for certain of the cell populations studied.

ULTRAVIOLET ABSORPTION IN EPIDERMOID CANCER CELLS.

The "excessive functional activity" of some cancer cells first found by Caspersson has been observed in fixed, stained smears of cervical epidermoid carcinomas from four patients. Preliminary results suggest that there may be a characteristic difference between the absorption profiles of some epidermoid cancer cells and other cells found in cytological smears. It is our belief that with an appropriate electronic scanning system such cells can be detected by measurements of their absorptions at two different wavelengths.