Comparison of students' performance in the traditional oral clinical examination and the objective structured clinical examination.

Objective: To find out whether the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) using standardized patients allows the same evaluation of students as the traditional oral clinical examination (TOCE) using real patients.

Methods: The results of 4 cohorts of students (904 students) in the end of posting examination (using the TOCE), and the end of year examination (using OSCE) during the academic years 2003-2006 at King Abdulaziz University, Faculty of Medicine, Jeddah, Kingdom of saudi Arabia were analyzed retrospectively. Spearman's correlation coefficient was calculated for comparison of performance in the different parts of the 2 examinations.

Sympathetic chain Schwannoma.

Schwannomas are rare, benign, slowly growing tumors arising from Schwann cells that line nerve sheaths. Schwannomas arising from the cervical sympathetic chain are extremely rare. Here, we report a case of a 70-year-old man who presented with only an asymptomatic neck mass.

Effect of thawing rate and post-thaw culture on the cryopreserved fetal rat islets: functional and morphological correlation.

The ability of the fetal pancreatic islet cells to multiply rendered them a potential tissue for transplantation studies to cure diabetes. A bank of fetal islets could be created with proper storage in liquid nitrogen. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of thawing rate and post-thaw culture on the structural and functional integrity of isolated cryopreserved islets of rat fetuses.

Structural study on cultured isolated fetal rat pancreatic islets.

Objective: To perform a morphometric and structural study of the cultured isolated fetal rat pancreatic islets.

Methods: Islets of the fetal rat pancreas, aged 22 days were isolated by the standard procedure of collagenase digestion and culture technique. The islets were cultured for 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 days.

Hepatocellular carcinoma with cutaneous metastasis.

We report a 60-year-old male patient with hepatocellular carcinoma HCC who presented with cutaneous metastasis of the chest wall and ribs destruction. The tumor was advanced, and the patient died next day.

Wandering spleen.

Congenital malformations of the spleen are rare. We report 3 cases of wandering spleen presented as abdominal or pelvi-abdominal mass. Two patients were suffering from chronic lower abdominal pain with thrombosed splenic pedicle and the third patient had an acute abdomen.

Spontaneous rupture of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common malignancy among males and the 7th among female patients in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is due to the endemicity of hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Spontaneous rupture of hepatocellular carcinoma is rare.