Comparison of host response to polypropylene and non-cross-linked porcine small intestine serosal-derived collagen implants in a rat model.

Objective: To compare the host response, architectural integration and tensile strength of polypropylene and porcine small intestine submucosa-derived implants in a rat model.

Design: Experimental study.

Setting: Center for Surgical Technologies, Faculty of Medicine, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

Choking, sore throat with referred otalgia and dysphagia in a patient with diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH).

A patient with a progressively increasing immobilisation of the cervical spine, severe impaired swallowing (choking), sore throat with referred right-sided otalgia, mild voice disorder and dysphagia due to extrinsic bone compression of the posterior hypopharyngeal wall and oesophagus is presented. Radiographic investigation demonstrated the underlying condition to be a diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis with prominent and bumpy alteration of the anterior longitudinal ligament impinging the hypopharynx. Via an anterolateral approach towards the cervical spine the anterior irregular part of the ossification was removed and the surface of the spine flattened.