Usefulness of the pain sensitivity questionnaire to discriminate the pain behaviour of chronic pain patients.

Background: Chronic pain is no longer an effective warning system, but a syndrome with co-morbidities and many causes, needing a careful evaluation. Questions remain about the pain behaviour of chronic pain patients compared with patients with acute pain, or healthy subjects that we investigated.

Methods: We compared three populations: healthy (HS, n=280), with acute pain (AP=110 patients), and chronic pain (CP=280 patients) by assessing their pain behaviour with the pain sensitivity questionnaire (PSQ-total and PSQ-minor).

Endoscope-integrated ICG technology: first application during intracranial aneurysm surgery.

Microscopic indocyanine green videoangiography (mICG-VA) has gained wide acceptance during intracranial aneurysm surgery by lowering rates of incomplete clipping and occlusion of surrounding vessels. However, mICG-VA images are limited to the microscopic view and some deeper areas, including the aneurysm sac/neck posterior side, cannot be efficiently assessed as they are hidden by the aneurysm, clips, or surrounding structures. Contrarily, endoscopes allow a wider area of visualization, but neurosurgical endoscopes to date only provided visual data.

Sterile surgical technique for shunt placement reduces the shunt infection rate in children: preliminary analysis of a prospective protocol in 115 consecutive procedures.

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the rigid application of a sterile protocol for shunt placement was applicable on a routine basis and allowed the reduction of shunt infections (SI) in children.

Materials And Methods: Since 2001, a rigid sterile protocol for shunt placement in children using neither antibiotic-impregnated catheters nor laminar airflow was prospectively applied at Erasme Hospital, Brussels, Belgium. For assessing the protocol efficacy before continuation, we preliminarily analyzed the results of the first 100 operated children (43 females, 57 males, 49 aged <12 months; 115 consecutive shunt placement/revision procedures).

Bispectral index is a topographically dependent variable in patients receiving propofol anaesthesia.

Background: As very strong agreement has been reported between bispectral index (BIS) values measured from the occipital and frontal skull areas, we compared BIS values measured from central and parietal areas with those from frontal area to investigate whether BIS is really a topographically dependent or topographically independent variable.

Methods: Twenty patients, ASA I-II, non-obese, aged 18-62 yr and with no neurological disorders were enrolled. Based on the 10-20 international landmarks, five silver dome electrodes were positioned: F7, C3, P7, Cz (common reference) and Fp1 (ground).