Neurosurgical aspects of dialysis-related spinal amyloidosis: Report of three cases and a review of the literature.

Background And Purpose: Osteoarticular manifestations of beta-2 microglobulin amyloidosis are often diagnosed in long-term dialyzed patients. However, spinal involvement is rare (10-25% of patients), and generally not associated with neurological deterioration. Compression of the spinal cord or roots is extremely rare, and probably under-recognized.

The importance of predicting factors in the surgical outcome of peripheral nerve sheath tumors.

Objective: Peripheral nerve sheath tumors (PNSTs) are tumors arising from the neural sheath cells. Surgery plays a central role in the management of this disease, with the purpose of obtaining radical tumor's resection and at the same time providing the best outcome. We retrospectively analyzed 53 PNSTs in 42 patients in an attempt to identify some factors that may improve surgical outcome.

[Autoimmune hemolytic anemia presenting during treatment of chronic hepatitis C with interferon alpha].

Autoimmune hemolytic anemia has been rarely described in patients with chronic hepatitis C during interferon-alpha therapy. We report a case of Coombs-positive autoimmune hemolytic anemia, occurring 9 months after the onset of monotherapy with interferon-alpha-2b (3 million units thrice in week) for chronic hepatitis C. Interferon withdrawal and prednisone treatment induced a complete remission of hematological findings after 3 months.