Prevalence of gastrointestinal pathogenic bacteria in patients with diarrhoea attending Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa.

Background: Diarrhoea due to gastrointestinal infections is a significant problem facing the South African (SA) healthcare system. Infections can be acquired both from the community and from the hospital environment itself, the latter acting as a reservoir for potential pathogenic bacteria.

Objectives: To examine the prevalence of a panel of potential diarrhoea-causing bacteria in patients attending a tertiary healthcare facility in Cape Town, SA.

Lumbar disk disease in pregnancy.

Background: Lumbar disk herniation is rare in pregnancy. We report on three pregnant women with this disorder seen over 2 years.

Cases: Three women were seen with progressive back pain, paresthesias, and urinary retention.

Capture errors and sequencing after frontal brain lesions.

This study addresses the effect of strong routine associations (capture errors) in hindering the control of on-line serial or sequencing tasks. Patients with focal frontal lobe lesions were significantly inferior to normal control subjects and patients with posterior brain lesions, when conditions that may lead to capture errors were present. The results suggest that the primary dysfunction exhibited by patients with frontal lobe lesions on capture error tasks may lie not in the disengagement from the invalid associations but in focusing attention to alternative strategies of response.

Dissection of the intracranial vertebral artery.

We describe four patients and review prior reports to clarify the clinical, radiographic, and pathologic findings of intracranial vertebral artery (VA) dissection. A 43-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman had chronic bilateral VA dissecting aneurysms. The man had multiple episodes of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and necropsy showed multiple dissections and defects in the internal elastica.