Therapeutic plasma exchange in the treatment of neuroimmunologic disorders: review of 50 cases.

Therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) has been used for the treatment of neurologic diseases in which autoimmunity plays a major role. We reviewed the medical records of our patients who had consecutively been treated by TPE between January 1998 and June 2000. Neurological indications included myasthenia gravis (30 patients), multiple sclerosis attack (6 patients with remitting-relapsing course and 3 patients with secondary progressive course), Guillain-Barrè syndrome (6 patients), paraproteinemic neuropathy (2 patients), and chronic inflammatory demyelinating neuropathy (CIDP), transverse myelitis due to systemic lupus erythematosus, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis in one patient each.

Idiopathic hypertrophic cranial pachymeningitis with perifocal brain edema.

Idiopathic hypertrophic cranial pachymeningitis (IHCP) consists of meningeal thickening due to chronic inflammation for which no cause such as infection, specific granulomatous disease, or malignancy is demonstrable. We present a case of IHCP with perifocal brain edema suggesting mass lesion with its magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and pathologic findings. A 36-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital in August 2001 with a complaint of motor weakness in her left leg for 1 month.