Noodles stay hotter longer.

During a 10-year period, a high incidence of burns from prepared noodle soup was noticed at the Baltimore Regional Burn Center. Because of the perceived severity of these burns, we took a more systematic look at the burns resulting from this type of soup to determine its effect on patient hospitalization and also examined the properties of the soup itself. All medical records of pediatric patients admitted to the Center between 1989 and 1999 with scald burns from various types of soup were retrospectively reviewed and divided into the Noodle Soup group, and the Other Soup group.

Acellular allograft dermal matrix: immediate or delayed epidermal coverage?

In a prospective, randomized study seventeen patients received skin grafts to a freshly excised burn wound. One group was grafted with a deantigenized dermal matrix and immediately overgrafted with thin autograft. The second group was grafted with dermal matrix, which was then covered with bank allograft for protection, and autografted 1 week later.

The changing face of mesenteric infarction.

Intestinal infarction remains a devastating event despite improvements in clinical recognition as well as diagnostic and therapeutic modalities. Recent changes in the etiology of this disease have not been examined. A retrospective review of 121 consecutive patients over a 6-year period was undertaken.

Routine pulmonary artery catheterization does not reduce morbidity and mortality of elective vascular surgery: results of a prospective, randomized trial.

Objective: The authors determined whether the preoperative placement of a pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) with optimization of hemodynamics results in outcome improvement after elective vascular surgery.

Summary Background Data: The PAC commonly is used not only in patients who are critically ill, but also perioperatively in major elective surgery. Few prospective studies exist documenting its usefulness.

Will stereotactic breast biopsy achieve results as good as current techniques?

Stereotactic procedures recently have been advocated to replace most needle localization and open biopsy procedures. In order to provide a baseline for comparison at our institution, a retrospective review of our results over the last 3 years was performed. During this time period, 496 biopsies were performed in 480 patients.