Comparing the diagnostic adequacy of 25-Gauge fork-tip franseen reverse-bevel-type needles in EUS-guided tissue acquisition: A prospective randomized study with a retrospective control.

Background And Objectives: EUS-guided fine-needle biopsy (FNB) is an established technique for the acquisition of tissue to diagnose lesions of the gastrointestinal tract and surrounding organs. Recently, newer-generation FNB needles have been introduced, including a second-generation reverse-bevel and the third-generation fork-tip and Franseen needles. We aimed to determine if there was any difference between these needles in terms of cytopathological diagnostic yield, sample cellularity, or sample bloodiness.

Perineural spread of recurrent cutaneous melanoma along cervical nerves into the spinal cord.

Perineural spread of malignant melanoma is rare but increasingly recognized as a potential mechanism of metastasis particularly in desmoplastic melanoma, which has neurotropic characteristics. In the head and neck, this form of melanoma spread affecting cranial nerves has been described; however, to date, only one case of melanoma spreading to the brachial plexus has ever been reported. We present a case of cutaneous melanoma recurrence below the right jaw with perineural spread along the C3 and C4 nerves into the spinal cord, something which has not been documented previously in the literature.