Postoperative rhabdomyolysis: a completely localised and symmetrical phenomenon?

The aim of this case report is to describe an unusual case, where rhabdomyolysis was completely confined to both anterior tibial muscles, with sparing of the posterior compartments (no involvement of gastrocnemii). The patient had undergone a 3 h craniotomy and was weaned from ventilator support on postoperative day 1. All haemodynamic and vital parameters were within normal limits.

Diagnostic and prognostic significance of different antinuclear antibodies in more than 1000 consecutive Albanian patients with rheumatic diseases.

In an unselected population of 1390 consecutive Albanian patients with rheumatic diseases (RD) and other miscellaneous non-rheumatic diseases (MNRD), for whom antinuclear antibody (ANA) testing was requested, we calculated the diagnostic sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value (PPV) of ANA positive results, ANA titres over 1:100, anti-native DNA (nDNA), anti-Sm, anti-U1 RNP, anti-SSA (Ro) anti-SSB (La) and anti-non-identified extractable nuclear antigen (NIENA) antibodies. The PPVs of these ANA types were found to be appreciable only for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); only the positive predictive value of ANA for SLE (26.4%) was lower than that for RA (34.