[Time lost between stroke and carotid endarterectomy].

Objective: To establish whether measures taken to shorten the interval of time between a stroke and carotid endarterectomy (CEA) procedure at two Dutch hospitals had any effect.

Design: Retrospective and descriptive.

Method: Data were gathered on all patients with symptomatic narrowing of the carotid artery from a non-academic teaching hospital (Amphia Ziekenhuis in Breda) as well as from a university clinic dedicated to carotid abnormalities (University Medical Center Utrecht, UMCU).

The facet orientation circle. A new parameter for facet joint angulation in the lower lumbar spine.

Study Design: A descriptive quantitative evaluation was done of the transverse orientation of the lower lumbar facet joints as measured by computed tomography scanning.

Objectives: To evaluate a new parameter for facet joint angulation in the transverse plane (the "facet orientation circle") and to obtain reference values for this new parameter.

Summary Of Background Data: In other studies, both in vitro and in vivo, the angulation of the facet joints has been measured in degrees relative to the frontal or sagittal plane.

Delayed radiation myelopathy: serial MR-imaging and pathology.

Clinical data, MR-scans, time-dose fractionation schemes and neuropathologic findings of two cases of delayed radiation myelopathy (DRM), are presented. Both patients, a 72-year-old diabetic woman with cervical lymphnode metastasis from a squamous cell carcinoma and a 46-year-old woman with tonsillar carcinoma, developed paraparesis followed by quadriplegia, at 7 and at 10 months following radiation. The spinal cord received 46 and 49 Gy.